Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract

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.

Punishment, reward, and cooperation in a framed field experiment

“…The ineffectiveness of punishment in creating cooperation contrasts sharply with most previous laboratory studies, but is consistent with the recent work of Janssen et al (2010). Their study, while conducted in the labora-tory, has the most similar context to ours of any study.…”

“…In contrast to results reported from most laboratory experiments, but in agreement with Janssen et al (2010), we find no evidence that punishment promotes cooperation. Rewards are also ineffective.…”

“…This suggests that the difference between most laboratory studies and ours may lie in features of the games played, rather than in the fact that ours was conducted outside the laboratory. Our setting shares many features with Janssen et al (2010), including (a) that individuals engage in a real time activity, (b) that they can update their cooperation tendency in real time in response to cues about how much others are cooperating, and (c) that the experiment is framed as harvesting of a resource. Any one, or a combination of these features, may make punishment and reward less effective.…”

“…Similarly, if it is not too costly to do so, the ability to reward peers can also increase cooperation (Sefton et al (2007), Vyrastekova and van Soest (2008), and Rand et al (2009) The generality of the ability of punishment to promote cooperation in a social dilemma has been called into question in a recent paper by Janssen et al (2010). They consider a laboratory environment, which includes spatial and dynamic elements that exist in many of the social dilemmas found in the field, in particular those involving extraction of a common pool resource.…”

“…In the Baseline treatment, they can neither punish nor reward. The experiment has many of the features of the Janssen et al (2010) paradigm. In particular, individuals choose a cooperation intensity in real time, they can update it in response to the real-time behavior of others, and the setting is framed as an extraction of a resource.…”