Integrating commons dilemma findings in a general dynamic model of cooperative behavior in resource crises

Abstract

The research on commons dilemmas is characterized by innumerable published findings, each standing relatively isolated from the other. To date there is little integration of the findings under a unified concept. The present contribution aims to integrate already existing findings in a general dynamic model of cooperative behavior in resource crises by means of computer simulation. The model postulates that people base their decisions regarding resource use on both ecological and social information. Whether or not ecological or social information will dominate, however, depends on people's social values, attributions, and their perceptions of the state of the resource. The advantage of the simulation method used is that successful integration of the findings can be shown explicitly, as the simulation then replicates the experimental data. With the model presented here, it is also possible to let variables work together whose interaction has not yet been investigated in real experiments. For instance, the simulation model allows us to hypothesize that people, in dependency upon their resource uncertainty and in dependency upon their attributions, utilize a resource completely differently if the resource is in an optimal or sub-optimal condition.

Psychological Factors Determining Individual Compliance with Rules for Common Pool Resource Management: The Case of a Cuban Community Sharing a Solar Energy System

“…Social norms, or notions of what most people perceive as adequate in a certain situation, exert a kind of a social pressure, because ignoring such norms could be sanctioned by others (Reno et al, 1993). Several studies of rule compliance in common pool resource systems have revealed that individuals adjust their behavior to the behavior of their social group (Eggert and Ellegard, 2003;Mosler and Brucks, 2003;Nielsen and Mathiesen, 2003). The perception of the legitimacy of rules is a further factor influencing compliance.…”

Learning Through Fictitious Play in a Game-Theoretic Model of Natural Resource Consumption

“…whereρ i indeed constitutes the Nash equilibrium as given in (8). Note that in (10) both consumptions are positive i.e., y 1 > 0,ȳ 2 > 0 which constitutes a self-reliant equilibrium as per the notion defined in [6].…”

“…In the context of natural resource consumption, Mosler & Brucks [8] interpret the objective information to be related to the state of the resource (the ecological factor) and the social information to be related to the consumption of other agents (the social factor). Similar to Mosler & Bruck's computational model [8], we calculate the change in consumption as a weighted sum of the ecological and social factors. The relative weighing of these factors are modeled through certain psychological characteristics that portray the cognitive decision making process associated with resource usage.…”

“…The Human In The Loop (HITL) concept [5] addresses this issue by integrating human individuals as fundamental units of the system in contrast to the conventional approach of modeling human beings as exogenous inputs. In the same spirit, our selected model of resource consumption [6] employs research from social psychology [8], [9] to build a mathematical representation of consumer behavior. The social component of the model is dependent on psychological characteristics of the individual consumers such as their willingness to cooperate and the attribution of blame (nature or society) in the event of a resource crisis.…”

Simulating Human Behavior for Understanding and Managing Environmental Resource Use

“…This is an appropriate first step, but for understanding the real decision processes it is necessary to use a method that takes some of the most relevant factors and processes into account. Therefore, Mosler and Brucks (2003) developed a general dynamic model of resource use by means of computer simulation.…”