Influence of human capital on the trial and error learning process in a common pool resource (CPR) game

This paper presents a study regarding the behavior of Pacific-Colombian fishers in a Common Pool Resource game. Results show that decision-making depends on human capital accumulation and the learning process. Specifically, through trial and error, those players with more human capital adjust their decisions on the basis of a cooperative-collusive solution by following the feedback of their own most successful strategies in past rounds. Notably, fishers with the higher levels of formal schooling tend to harvest less because they have a better understanding of dilemma-type games and the higher benefits involved when they cooperate.

The Common Pool Resource Heatmap: A Tool to Drive Changes in Water Law and Governance

Anticipated water-related impacts of climate change heighten the need for tools supporting proactive efforts to address current and future conflicts involving water. Analysing a regulatory framework for a water resource using Ostrom’s (1990) Common Pool Resource (CPR) theory can assist in identifying regulatory weaknesses that may contribute to deterioration of the resource and conflicts between resource users. Equally, adopting adaptive management to transform the regulatory context can also have positive effects. However, if incentives drive resource extractor behaviours, a tool to communicate these initiatives with stakeholders, including state actors, could assist. This article presents the ‘CPR heat map’ to assist with efforts to drive changes in water governance. An example of the CPR heatmap is presented involving the governance of groundwater in the Surat Cumulative Management Area, Queensland, Australia. This example shows how perceived weaknesses and strengths of the governance framework can be illustrated. It also shows how initiatives that are transforming water governance can be presented to drive social learning. The CPR heat map illustrates the collective nature of the resource system and how to potentially resolve and manage water-related conflict. This research has implications for how we approach conflict involving water and may be also relevant for managing other CPRs.

Economic and political inequality in the management of socio-environmental problems

We designed and conducted an experiment of common-pool resource management involving economic and political inequality. Participants are assigned to different types differing in their endowments-Poor, Middle and Rich-and play an appropriation dilemma, with and without a voting procedure to select a quota limiting maximum extraction. Political inequality is introduced by allocating a higher likelihood to select the voted quota of a given player type: in the Ptochocracy treatment, the "Poor" type has a higher chance of setting her choice as quota; whereas in the Demarchy and Plutocracy treatments, this is true for the "Middle" and "Rich" types, respectively. These are contrasted with Democracy, where the votes of all three types are equally likely to be selected. Theoretically, each player type selfishly prefers the quota closer (i.e., one unit below) their endowment, although the lower quota would be socially desirable.We find that participants voted for the selfishly preferred quota between half and two-thirds of the time, and the introduction of these quotas decreased the absolute extraction in about 17.5%, even though participants were more likely to choose extraction levels closer to their maximum capacity (now set by the quota). Nonetheless, we do not find systematic differences in extraction patterns between treatments.

Evolution of warfare by resource raiding favors polymorphism in belligerence and bravery

From protists to primates, intergroup aggression and warfare over resources has been observed in several taxa whose populations typically consist of groups connected by limited genetic mixing. Here, we model the co-evolution between four traits relevant to this setting: (i) investment into common-pool resource production within groups ('helping'); (ii) proclivity to raid other groups to appropriate their resources ('belligerence'); and investments into (iii) defense and (iv) offense of group contests ('defensive and offensive bravery'). We show that when traits co-evolve, the population often experiences disruptive selection favouring two morphs: 'Hawks', who express high levels of both belligerence and offensive bravery; and 'Doves', who express neither. This social polymorphism involves further among-traits associations when the fitness costs of helping and bravery interact. In particular if helping is antagonistic with both forms of bravery, co-evolution leads to the coexistence of individuals that either: (i) do not participate into common-pool resource production but only in its defense and appropriation ('Scrounger Hawks'); or (ii) only invest into common pool resource production ('Producer Doves'). Provided groups are not randomly mixed, these findings are robust to several modelling assumptions. This suggests that inter-group aggression is a potent mechanism in favoring within-group social diversity and behavioural syndromes.

The Power of Tolerance vs. Unselfishness as a Cultural Determinant of Cooperation

Cooperation in collective action problems and resource dilemmas is often assumed to depend on the values of the individuals involved, such as their degree of unselfishness and tolerance. Societal differences in cooperation and cooperative norms may therefore result from cultural variation in emphasis on these personal values. Here we draw on several cross-national datasets to examine whether society-level emphasis on unselfishness and tolerance and respect for other people predict how societies vary in cooperation [in a continuous prisoner’s dilemma (PD)] and in norms governing cooperation [in a common pool resource dilemma (CPR)]. The results suggest that high levels of cooperation and cooperative norms are promoted specifically by a cultural emphasis on tolerance.