Serious games to study the influence of wildlife devaluation strategies on hunter behaviour

<p>The international illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens countless species globally. Many solutions to the IWT have been proposed and implemented, the most common being increased security. However, security on its own has been ineffective at protecting all wildlife. Wildlife commodity devaluation strategies have also been proposed and trialled as a complement or substitute to security. The strategy has primarily been applied to protect rhinoceros populations by, for example, dehorning them. The apparently logical expectation is that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. Either hunters will choose not to hunt a population with devalued animals or choose not to kill one when it is found. Unexpectedly, however, theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that devaluation might fail, and may even encourage hunting and the killing of devalued animals. This apparently illogical outcome is the subject of this thesis. Games and choice-based surveying were used to study the behaviour of people hunting a commodity for financial gain. These methods were used to understand why devaluation strategies might fail to protect wildlife and to understand when they might be beneficial. Two games and a choice-based survey posing different hunting scenarios were developed to measure hunter behaviour and test hunters’ responses to risk, value and devaluation. Lucky-dip games were rapid, highly replicated games used to test the impact of variation in devaluation and security strategies across multiple populations. Thirty-three lucky-dip games were conducted, each with ten members of the public participating. They were conducted at community events (e.g. fairs and galas) across Wellington Region in February and March of 2018. Scavenger-hunt games, to elicit more complex behaviours and interactions among participants, were conducted over a longer time and larger area but were, therefore, also less replicated. Four of these games were conducted with between 8-20 members of outdoor recreation clubs. They were conducted at public parks across Wellington Region throughout 2018. And lastly, an online scenario choice-based survey presented members of recreational hunting clubs with hypothetical scenarios where the value and likelihood of a successful hunt varied. The survey was distributed through hunting organisations and received 333 responses. The three research methods presented similar scenarios but used different formats to test my ideas among a diverse population of people. Each method involved participants hunting protected items that varied in value with some items having been devalued. Measuring for the trade-offs that people make between risk and reward when making hunting decisions, including choices about where to hunt, whether to kill and, if they did, whether to harvest a commodity, was of particular interest. Devaluation failed to protect commodities and increase commodity survival. In both games, hunters chose to ‘kill’ devalued commodities. Of the devalued items located by hunters, 74% and 100% were ‘killed’ in the lucky-dip and scavenger-hunt games, respectively. This appears to be because risk increased people’s perceived value of partially devalued commodities. Low-risk lucky-dip games resulted in 44% more devalued items being kept by participants compared to high-risk games. Additionally, devaluation reduced people’s perceptions of risk. Compared to lucky-dip games with just risk, games that included devaluation caused a 10% drop in survival at the highest-risk treatment. Moreover, when devalued commodities were worthless in the lucky-dip games, 27% more were ‘killed’ compared to when devalued commodities were worth 25% of the full-value commodity. Therefore, contrary to expectations, partial devaluation may be more successful than complete devaluation. Greater rates of devaluation were also met with greater variation in commodity survival between games. Coefficients of variation for commodity survival increased from 12% to 41% as devaluation rates increased from zero to 100%. Moreover, respondents to the survey ranked the most devalued population (90%) highest 36% of the time, but also lowest 35% of the time. Thus, peoples’ responses to devaluation vary. Risk was a more effective and consistent regulator of hunting behaviour. Average commodity survival was 88% at maximum security treatments but was only 65% at maximum devaluation treatments. My experimental games and surveys do not support the expectation that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. The IWT is a complex socio-economic system, and human behaviour is varied in response to risk and reward. Devaluation introduces a complex interaction between the two, rendering risk and devaluation less effective in some circumstances. Every population and situation is unique, and the effectiveness of devaluation will be context-specific. Finally, the research demonstrates that serious games can be applied to the study of criminal hunting behaviour. Other difficult-to-study human subjects and systems could benefit from greater use of similar methodologies.</p>

Serious games to study the influence of wildlife devaluation strategies on hunter behaviour

<p>The international illegal wildlife trade (IWT) threatens countless species globally. Many solutions to the IWT have been proposed and implemented, the most common being increased security. However, security on its own has been ineffective at protecting all wildlife. Wildlife commodity devaluation strategies have also been proposed and trialled as a complement or substitute to security. The strategy has primarily been applied to protect rhinoceros populations by, for example, dehorning them. The apparently logical expectation is that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. Either hunters will choose not to hunt a population with devalued animals or choose not to kill one when it is found. Unexpectedly, however, theory and anecdotal evidence suggest that devaluation might fail, and may even encourage hunting and the killing of devalued animals. This apparently illogical outcome is the subject of this thesis. Games and choice-based surveying were used to study the behaviour of people hunting a commodity for financial gain. These methods were used to understand why devaluation strategies might fail to protect wildlife and to understand when they might be beneficial. Two games and a choice-based survey posing different hunting scenarios were developed to measure hunter behaviour and test hunters’ responses to risk, value and devaluation. Lucky-dip games were rapid, highly replicated games used to test the impact of variation in devaluation and security strategies across multiple populations. Thirty-three lucky-dip games were conducted, each with ten members of the public participating. They were conducted at community events (e.g. fairs and galas) across Wellington Region in February and March of 2018. Scavenger-hunt games, to elicit more complex behaviours and interactions among participants, were conducted over a longer time and larger area but were, therefore, also less replicated. Four of these games were conducted with between 8-20 members of outdoor recreation clubs. They were conducted at public parks across Wellington Region throughout 2018. And lastly, an online scenario choice-based survey presented members of recreational hunting clubs with hypothetical scenarios where the value and likelihood of a successful hunt varied. The survey was distributed through hunting organisations and received 333 responses. The three research methods presented similar scenarios but used different formats to test my ideas among a diverse population of people. Each method involved participants hunting protected items that varied in value with some items having been devalued. Measuring for the trade-offs that people make between risk and reward when making hunting decisions, including choices about where to hunt, whether to kill and, if they did, whether to harvest a commodity, was of particular interest. Devaluation failed to protect commodities and increase commodity survival. In both games, hunters chose to ‘kill’ devalued commodities. Of the devalued items located by hunters, 74% and 100% were ‘killed’ in the lucky-dip and scavenger-hunt games, respectively. This appears to be because risk increased people’s perceived value of partially devalued commodities. Low-risk lucky-dip games resulted in 44% more devalued items being kept by participants compared to high-risk games. Additionally, devaluation reduced people’s perceptions of risk. Compared to lucky-dip games with just risk, games that included devaluation caused a 10% drop in survival at the highest-risk treatment. Moreover, when devalued commodities were worthless in the lucky-dip games, 27% more were ‘killed’ compared to when devalued commodities were worth 25% of the full-value commodity. Therefore, contrary to expectations, partial devaluation may be more successful than complete devaluation. Greater rates of devaluation were also met with greater variation in commodity survival between games. Coefficients of variation for commodity survival increased from 12% to 41% as devaluation rates increased from zero to 100%. Moreover, respondents to the survey ranked the most devalued population (90%) highest 36% of the time, but also lowest 35% of the time. Thus, peoples’ responses to devaluation vary. Risk was a more effective and consistent regulator of hunting behaviour. Average commodity survival was 88% at maximum security treatments but was only 65% at maximum devaluation treatments. My experimental games and surveys do not support the expectation that reducing the value of rhinos’ horns will discourage hunters and protect rhino. The IWT is a complex socio-economic system, and human behaviour is varied in response to risk and reward. Devaluation introduces a complex interaction between the two, rendering risk and devaluation less effective in some circumstances. Every population and situation is unique, and the effectiveness of devaluation will be context-specific. Finally, the research demonstrates that serious games can be applied to the study of criminal hunting behaviour. Other difficult-to-study human subjects and systems could benefit from greater use of similar methodologies.</p>

M Equilibrium: A Theory of Beliefs and Choices in Games

We introduce a set-valued solution concept, M equilibrium, to capture empirical regularities from over half a century of game theory experiments. We show M equilibrium serves as a meta theory for various models that hitherto were considered unrelated. M equilibrium is empirically robust and, despite being set-valued, falsifiable. Results from a series of experiments that compare M equilibrium to leading behavioral game theory models demonstrate its virtues in predicting observed choices and stated beliefs. Data from experimental games with a unique pure-strategy Nash equilibrium and multiple M equilibria exhibit coordination problems that could not be anticipated through the lens of existing models. (JEL C72, C90, D83)

Looking Like a Million Dollars: Does Attractiveness Priming Increase Altruistic Behavior in Experimental Games?

The emergence of altruistic behavior constitutes one of the most widely studied problems in evolutionary biology and behavioral science. Multiple explanations have been proposed, most importantly including kin selection, reciprocity, and costly signaling in sexual selection. In order to test the latter, this study investigated whether people behave more altruistically when primed by photographs of attractive faces and whether more or less altruistic people differ in the number of sexual and romantic partners. Participants in the general population (N = 158, 84 F, 74 M) first rated the attractiveness of photographs of 20 faces of the opposite (sexually preferred) sex and then played the Dictator and Ultimatum Games (DG and UG). The photograph rating acted as priming; half the participants received photographs of people rated as more attractive than average in an earlier study, and the other half received photographs previously rated as less attractive. The attractiveness-primed participants, especially men, were expected to behave more altruistically—signaling that they are desirable, resource-possessing partners. We also expected altruists to self-report more sexual and romantic partners. The observed difference between altruistic behaviors in the attractiveness- and unattractiveness-primed groups occurred in UG offers, however, in the opposite than expected direction in women. The number of sexual partners was positively correlated to minimum acceptable offers (MAOs) in the UG, in line with expectations based on the theory of costly signaling.

Investigating the failure to best respond in experimental games

We examine strategic sophistication using eight two-person 3 × 3 one-shot games. To facilitate strategic thinking, we design a ‘structured’ environment where subjects first assign subjective values to the payoff pairs and state their beliefs about their counterparts’ probable strategies, before selecting their own strategies in light of those deliberations. Our results show that a majority of strategy choices are inconsistent with the equilibrium prediction, and that only just over half of strategy choices constitute best responses to subjects’ stated beliefs. Allowing for other-regarding considerations increases best responding significantly, but the increase is rather small. We further compare patterns of strategies with those made in an ‘unstructured’ environment in which subjects are not specifically directed to think strategically. Our data suggest that structuring the pre-decision deliberation process does not affect strategic sophistication.

Experimental Games and Social Decision Making

Experimental games model situations in which the future outcomes of individuals and groups depend on their own choices and on those of other (groups of) individuals. Games are a powerful tool to identify the neural and psychological mechanisms underlying interpersonal and group cooperation and coordination. Here we discuss recent developments in how experimental games are used and adapted, with an increased focus on repeated interactions, partner control through sanctioning, and partner (de)selection for future interactions. Important advances have been made in uncovering the neurobiological underpinnings of key factors involved in cooperation and coordination, including social preferences, cooperative beliefs, (emotion) signaling, and, in particular, reputations and (in)direct reciprocity. Emerging trends at the cross-sections of psychology, economics, and the neurosciences include an increased focus on group heterogeneities, intergroup polarization and conflict, cross-cultural differences in cooperation and norm enforcement, and neurocomputational modeling of the formation and updating of social preferences and beliefs.

A notion of prominence for games with natural‐language labels

We study games with natural‐language labels (i.e., strategic problems where options are denoted by words), for which we propose and test a measurable characterization of prominence. We assume that—ceteris paribus—players find particularly prominent those strategies that are denoted by words more frequently used in their everyday language. To operationalize this assumption, we suggest that the prominence of a strategy‐label is correlated with its frequency of occurrence in large text corpora, such as the Google Books corpus (“n‐gram” frequency). In testing for the strategic use of word frequency, we consider experimental games with different incentive structures (such as incentives to and not to coordinate), as well as subjects from different cultural/linguistic backgrounds. Our data show that frequently‐mentioned labels are more (less) likely to be selected when there are incentives to match (mismatch) others. Furthermore, varying one's knowledge of the others' country of residence significantly affects one's reliance on word frequency. Overall, the data show that individuals play strategies that fulfill our characterization of prominence in a (boundedly) rational manner.

Altruism and Parochialism Among Children and Adolescents: Sex and Age Differences

The article presents the results of an experimental study of altruism and parochialism among school- children in Moscow and the Moscow region. The propensity for prosocial behavior in children was assessed using an experimental technique developed by E. Fehr and adapted earlier in our experiments with children (Tanzania). A sample of the study consists of 379 children and adolescents (192 boys and 187 girls) aged 7 to 17 years. Schoolchildren made decisions in six proposed dilemmas — prosocial behavior, envy and altruism. The aim of the study was to identify the sex and age characteristics of altruistic and parochial behavior of children and adolescents from schools in Moscow and the Moscow region. The results of the research show that girls were more prosocial in making decisions in relation to unfamiliar peers in one of the experimental games. But the age of the schoolchildren was more important predictor than sex in decision of the allocation of resources. With age, students were more altruistic in relation to friends and unfamiliar peers. The most important factor influencing altruistic behavior turned out to be belonging to one’s own group (friend- ship) — a significant parochial effect was observed in all six dilemmas.

Why we need to account for human behavior and decision-making to effectively model the non-linear dynamics of livestock disease

Animal disease costs the livestock industries billions of dollars annually. These costs can be reduced using effective biosecurity. However, costs of biosecurity are steep and benefits must be weighed against the uncertain infection risks. Much effort has gone into determining efficacy of different biosecurity tactics and strategies. Unfortunately, the variability in human behavior and decision-making when confronted with risk information has largely been overlooked. Here we show that use of the human behavioral component is necessary to understand the patterns of infection incidence in livestock industries. Using an agent-based model developed with a foundation of supply chain and industry structural data, we integrate human behavioral data generated using experimental games that parameterizes communication strategies, learning, psychological discounting and categorization of human behavior along a risk aversion spectrum. The influence of risk communication strategies on human behavior can be tested with experimental gaming simulations and their impact on the system can be projected using agent-based models, delivering feedback to increase disease resiliency of production systems.