Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems

Governance of social-ecological systems is a major policy problem of the contemporary era. Field studies of fisheries, forests, and pastoral and water resources have identified many variables that influence the outcomes of governance efforts. We introduce an experimental environment that involves sp...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2010-04, Vol.328 (5978), p.613-617
Main Authors: Janssen, Marco A, Holahan, Robert, Lee, Allen, Ostrom, Elinor
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Applied psychology
Biological and medical sciences
Communication
Cooperative Behavior
Decision Making
Design of experiments
Dynamical systems
Dynamics
Ecology
Economic models
Environment. Ecology
Experimentation
Field research
Field study
Fisheries
Fisheries law
Fishery economics
Fishery resources
Forests
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Game Theory
Group Processes
Harvesting
Humans
Marine
Natural resources
Policies
Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry
Psychology. Psychophysiology
Public Policy
Punishment
Social Behavior
Sociology
Temporal logic
Time Factors
Vested benefits
Virtual avatars
Water resources
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Summary:Governance of social-ecological systems is a major policy problem of the contemporary era. Field studies of fisheries, forests, and pastoral and water resources have identified many variables that influence the outcomes of governance efforts. We introduce an experimental environment that involves spatial and temporal resource dynamics in order to capture these two critical variables identified in field research. Previous behavioral experiments of commons dilemmas have found that people are willing to engage in costly punishment, frequently generating increases in gross benefits, contrary to game-theoretical predictions based on a static pay-off function. Results in our experimental environment find that costly punishment is again used but lacks a gross positive effect on resource harvesting unless combined with communication. These findings illustrate the importance of careful generalization from the laboratory to the world of policy.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.1183532