Pro-Environmental Values Matter in Competitive but Not Cooperative Commons Dilemmas

Abstract

The choice to conserve or be greedy in a commons dilemma may be influenced by the behavior of others and by pro-environmental values. Participants completed a measure of pro-environmental values one week before taking part in an Internet-based commons dilemma microworld consisting of a shared fishery with three computer-controlled virtual fishers whom participants believed to be real people. The three virtual fishers either behaved greedily (taking an unsustainable number of fish each season) or sustainably. In the sustainable scenario, virtual fishers left abundant numbers of fish for the participant and, thus, pro-environmental values were not related to harvesting decisions. However, in the greedy scenario, participants' pro-environmental values significantly predicted sustainable behavior, demonstrating that the influence of others' greediness may be overridden by pro-environmental values.

Extrinsic Value Orientation and Decreased Sustainability of Shared Resources: The Moderating Role of Situational Characteristics

“…The positive link between EVO and greedy resource use was observed when others behaved competitively, but not when others were cooperative in preserving the shared resources, regardless of whether greediness was assessed as the greediness of season 1 or mean greediness across 10 seasons. This finding is consistent with previous studies [7,14,21] and was also observed when individual values were examined. For individual values, financial success was positively, and community contribution was negatively, related to both types of greediness.…”

“…Following the recommendations of Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn [37], we report Sustainability 2018, 10, 2199 4 of 13 how we determined our sample size, all data exclusions, all manipulations, and all measures in the study. A power analysis using G*Power [38] indicated that we needed 88 participants to detect the effect size reported in Sussman et al [21] (d = 0.6, 80% power, α = 0.05, two-tailed). We predetermined the recruitment of at least 88 participants, but aimed for as many as possible within three weeks.…”

“…A score higher than 1 indicates that a fisher catches fish more than his or her fair share (more than 20 fish). Both greediness of season 1 and mean greediness of 10 seasons were used for analyses [12,20,21].…”

“…Participants were told that they would play with the other three participants, but in fact each one played with three bot players. How many fish those bot players catch (i.e., greediness) was programmed to maintain the ocean either to be sustainable or unsustainable, following Sussman and colleagues [21].…”

Indicators of Informal and Formal Decision-making about a Socioscientific Issue

“…Egoistic values reflect self-enhancement while altruistic values reflect selftranscendence; biospheric values focus on social goods related specifically to the environment (Stern, 2000). VBN Theory has been widely used to understand environmentally significant decision-making and predict behaviors relevant to diverse environmental contexts (e.g., recycling) and across cultures (Huffman, Van Der Werff, Henning, & Watrous-Rodriguez, 2014;Sussman, Lavallee, & Gifford, 2016). VBN Theory has not been applied to educational settings other than cross-cultural comparisons (Cordano, Welcomer, Scherer, Pradenas, & Parada, 2010;Menzel & Bögeholz, 2010) and evaluation of study abroad (Wynveen, Kyle, & Tarrant, 2011), despite being potentially useful lens for understanding values that students leverage in informal reasoning about SSIs.…”