The challenge of understanding decisions in experimental studies of common pool resource governance

Common pool resource experiments in the laboratory and the field have provided insights that have contrasted to those derived from conventional non-cooperative game theory. Contrary to predictions from non-cooperative game theory, participants are sometimes willing to restrain voluntarily from over...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecological economics 2011-07, Vol.70 (9), p.1571-1579
Main Authors: Anderies, John M., Janssen, Marco A., Bousquet, François, Cardenas, Juan-Camilo, Castillo, Daniel, Lopez, Maria-Claudio, Tobias, Robert, Vollan, Björn, Wutich, Amber
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Collective action
Common pool resources
Common pool resources Collective action Experimental economics Methodology Context
Communication
Communications
Context
Decision making
Ecological analysis
Economics
Ethics
Experimental economics
Game theory
Information processing
Laboratory testing
Methodology
Punishment
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Summary:Common pool resource experiments in the laboratory and the field have provided insights that have contrasted to those derived from conventional non-cooperative game theory. Contrary to predictions from non-cooperative game theory, participants are sometimes willing to restrain voluntarily from over extracting resources and use costly punishment to sanction other participants. Something as simple as face-to-face communication has been shown to increase average earnings significantly. In the next generation of experiments, both in the laboratory and in the field, we need to extract more information that provides insight concerning why people make the decisions they make. More information is needed concerning attributes of individuals as well as the social and social–ecological context in which they interact that may give rise to such deviations from theoretical predictions. In the process of extracting more information from participants and the contexts in which they interact, we face several methodological and ethical challenges which we address in this paper. ► Commons dilemma experiments contrasted with conventional non-cooperative game theory. ► Importance of communication and costly punishment for cooperation. ► Future research needs to focus on why people make the decisions they make. ► Information needed concerning the individual attributes as well as the social and social-ecological context. ► Experiments involve methodological and ethical challenges.
ISSN:0921-8009
1873-6106
DOI:10.1016/j.ecolecon.2011.01.011