Sustainability of common pool resources

Abstract

Sustainability has become a key issue in managing natural resources together with growing concerns for capitalism, environmental and resource problems. We hypothesize that the ongoing modernization of competitive societies, which we refer to as “capitalism,” affects human nature for utilizing common pool resources, thus compromising sustainability. To test this hypothesis, we design and implement a set of dynamic common pool resource games and experiments in the following two types of Nepalese areas: (i) rural (non-capitalistic) and (ii) urban (capitalistic) areas. We find that a proportion of prosocial individuals in urban areas is lower than that in rural areas, and urban residents deplete resources more quickly than rural residents. The composition of proself and prosocial individuals in a group and the degree of capitalism are crucial in that an increase in prosocial members in a group and the rural dummy positively affect resource sustainability by 65% and 63%, respectively. Overall, this paper shows that when societies move toward more capitalistic environments, the sustainability of common pool resources tends to decrease with the changes in individual preferences, social norms, customs and views to others through human interactions. This result implies that individuals may be losing their coordination abilities for social dilemmas of resource sustainability in capitalistic societies.

Time Preferences between Individuals and Groups in the Transition from Hunter-Gatherer to Industrial Societies

“…Previous research claims importance in considering the transition of societies from rural to urban to analyze social preferences and behaviors, demonstrating that people in urban societies are becoming more proself [2][3][4][5]. This paper considers three societies, namely, fisheries, farming and urban, as proxies of hunter-gatherer, agrarian and industrial societies, well representing the distinct cultures and daily practices that might shape human time preferences and behaviors.…”

“…In this course, each society exhibits distinct cultures and daily life practices that characterize temporal actions and consequences at individual and group levels. Shahrier [2][3][4][5] suggest that a transition of societies from rural to urban affects social preferences and behaviors. Moreover, such changes in preferences and behaviors are claimed to be related to people's temporal actions and consequences at the individual and group levels.…”

Happiness, Generativity and Social Preferences in a Developing Country: A Possibility of Future Design

“…Kamijo et al and Shahrier et al [49,50] have studied intergenerational sustainability and find that prosociality play an important role in taking sustainable actions. Timilsina et al [21] show that prosociality is an influential factor to characterize sustainable harvesting behaviors for common pool resources.…”

“…An intragenerational problem is a problem that arises among people in the same generation such as utilization of common pool resources and provision of public goods. Some literature demonstrates that prosocial people are likely to contribute more to the solution of such intragenerational problems [21]. On the other hand, an intergenerational problem is a problem that arises among people over different generations including future generations, such as climate change and government debt.…”

Application of Ostrom’s Social-Ecological Systems Framework in Nature Reserves: Hybrid Psycho-Economic Model of Collective Forest Management

“…In our scope to develop causable relationship between CF management and village net economic benefit, in relation to conservation [45,46], the SES framework falls short. It does, however, offer a close connection with collective action theory [47][48][49], common-pool resource theory [50][51][52], and game theory [53][54][55]. A recent study combined the SES framework with the NR-community conflict theory, revealing determinants of the conflicts in the Taibai Mountain National Reserve, China [56].…”