Can a Religious Message Increase Forest Conservation? Evidence from Forest users in Burundi

We study whether religious messaging can help address an environmental collective-action problem. We conduct a field experiment among forest users in rural Burundi, who are randomly assigned to hear a religious stewardship message, a secular civic-duty message, or a neutral message before deciding how much to contribute to forest conservation in a public-goods game. With 80% probability, the amount placed in the conservation account is donated to the public office responsible for forest protection. We find that the religious message increases contributions by 2.7 percentage points relative to the neutral message. This effect is statistically significant at the 5% level and corresponds to a 12.27% increase. The secular message has a smaller and statistically insignificant effect of 0.8 percentage points relative to the neutral message. The difference between the effects of the religious and secular messages is 1.8 percentage points, but is not statistically significant. We find no evidence that treatment effects vary with religiosity, religious affiliation, dependence on forest income, prior exposure to environmental messages in church, or pro-environmental perceptions. Our results suggest that religion can strengthen environmental cooperation by increasing individuals' willingness to bear private costs for conservation, even among those whose livelihoods depend directly on forest resources.