Resumo

Hydropower projects, in its majority, promote actions oriented to sustainability with the support of local stakeholders groups, such as small businesses, fishermen, indigenous groups, coastal farmers, landowners. The willingness of these stakeholders to cooperate, in order to preserve the environment, sometimes is supported by some forms of incentive, such as the use of punishment and reward mechanisms. Thus, the option not to exploit non-renewable resources or contribute to its preservation, consist of dilemmas of public goods, and behavioral economics offers subsidies for its analysis.

The research problem: How can the behavioral economy, through the use of incentive mechanisms, contribute to evaluate the intention of cooperation and of crowding out effect between a hydroelectric power plant and a group of local stakeholders in projects related to sustainability? The aim of this research is to analyze the intention of cooperation of a group of local stakeholders as well as the crowding out effect, as of the use of incentive mechanisms, on the interaction between a hydroelectric power plant and a group of local stakeholders in sustainability projects.

This paper presents the relevance of hydroelectric power plants for energy supply and also the impacts to the local environment. In order to mitigate these environmental impacts, the power plants develop a series of actions aimed at sustainability, which demand the participation of local stakeholders. The assessment of the intention and motivation to cooperate can be investigated using the expertise of the theory of the behavioral economic game, especially of the public goods game and the crowding out theory. As a way of encouraging cooperation, mechanisms of reward and punishment are used.

The construction of the experiment proposal was based on the analysis of the sustainability program of the Itaipu hydroelectric power plant and the review of secondary documents such as cooperation agreements, covenants and contracts. Thereafter, eight personal interviews with managers involved in the sustainability program were conducted, guided by a semi-structured script of qualitative questions, with subsequent content analysis. In view of the above, it was defined that the group of stakeholders to be studied would be the professional fishermen who worked in the region of the reservoir.

The relevance of the cooperation of professional fishermen for sustainability, especially for the preservation of the reservoir, as well as the risks of non-cooperation were analyzed in the light of the behavioral economic theory. The public goods of the game were proposed thereafter, as well as the guidelines for the experiments in the form of voluntary contributions.

It was concluded that the proposal, when applied in the form of an economic field experiment, can help in obtaining information about the efficiency of punishment and reward mechanisms in the cooperation between the company and its local stakeholders, considering their relevance to the projects focused on sustainability. Future negotiations and agreements can be supported, either in situations of bargaining when these groups present their demands, or also, to improve the management of contractual arrangements marked by cooperation between companies and local stakeholders.

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