LAUSR

Abstract How does scarcity affect individual willingness to altruistically enforce norms of sharing with others and individual willingness to share? Sharing within informal communities offers an important insurance mechanism during adverse shocks. But scarcity may test the stability of the enforcement mechanisms of informal norms. I conducted repeated incentivized economic experiments in a lean and in a relatively plentiful post-harvest season with the same group of Afghan subsistence farmers who experience seasonal scarcities annually annual seasonal scarcities. Enforcement of sharing weakens substantially in times of scarcity, while sharing itself remains temporally stable. Leniency in enforcement may protect individuals who cannot afford to share from social sanctions, yet it may also threaten sharing and result in deterioration of prosociality. The findings can help reconcile mixed evidence in existing literature which has documented both resilience and breakdowns in response to scarcity.