This handbook is designed for field practitioners, policy designers, analysts, and academia, interested in the analysis of the use and management of natural resources, local ecosystems and local public goods in general. The handbook resulted from more than seven years of experience conducting experiments in the field with thousands of villagers of Colombia who depend on cooperation and the use of local resources. Using tools from experimental economics, the handbook offers a set of games that can be applied in the field and the classroom for the study of human behavior and its interactions with institutions and social norms. The games included are: a competitive market with and without externalities, public goods provision game, common-pool resource game, watershed game, prisoners’ dilemma, trust game, and Coase bargaining game. The handbook includes all the materials needed to run each of the games and hints on how to analyze the data, using examples from our own experience applying these in rural areas of Colombia. These games, designed for everyone to use and apply with any group of students, villagers or neighbors, offer detailed data about the possibilities and limitations for solving problems of cooperation, the tragedy of the commons, the provision of public goods, and the social preferences of individuals including altruism, reciprocity, trust, inequality aversion among others. These are factors that play a crucial role in cases such as the use of common-pool resources and public goods (watersheds, irrigation systems, fisheries, forests). These games can be later used to discuss the results in a participatory manner with the participants to discuss the solutions to the social dilemmas involved in the management of local ecosystems and the provision of local public goods.