What’s the role of community managers in collective action? An empirical analysis of irrigators’ cooperation decisions in Chilean water user associations

In community-based natural resource management, users agree on rules for shared governance. Still, the responsibility for enforcing them and directing the group toward collective outcomes typically falls on a few individuals, namely, community managers. This study examines the role of community managers in collective actions within Water User Associations (WUAs) in Central Chile. Using survey data from 393 irrigators across 20 WUAs, we analyze how community managers’ performance affects users’ compliance with both operational level actions (withdrawing the allocated amount of water, canal maintenance, and paying fees on time) and collective-choice actions (proxied by attendance at WUA meetings). Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR) models reveal that community managers’ performance significantly enhances compliance at both levels and, in turn, that cooperation across the studied actions is all positively correlated. Furthermore, we found that community attributes (gender composition, educational level, and agricultural income percentage) were salient in collective-choice level decisions. In contrast, biophysical conditions and rules-in-use were more influential in operational level decisions. Particularly for paying fees on time, an operational level decision, we found a U-shaped effect of land size heterogeneity and a significant and positive correlation with collective-choice level decisions (attendance at WUA meetings). Our study contributes to the existing literature on collective action in community water resources management by disentangling the role of community managers in WUA outcomes. The findings highlight community managers’ performance as a critical lever for improving collective action, offering practical insights for policymakers aiming to strengthen participatory governance in natural resource management.