Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons

Sustainable use of common-pool resources such as fish, water or forests depends on the cooperation of resource users that restrain their individual extraction to socially optimal levels. Empirical evidence has shown that under certain social and biophysical conditions, self-organized cooperation in the commons can evolve. Global change, however, may drastically alter these conditions. We assess the robustness of cooperation to environmental variability in a stylized model of a community that harvests a shared resource. Community members follow a norm of socially optimal resource extraction, which is enforced through social sanctioning. Our results indicate that both resource abundance and a small increase in resource variability can lead to collapse of cooperation observed in the no-variability case, while either scarcity or large variability have the potential to stabilize it. The combined effects of changes in amount and variability can reinforce or counteract each other depending on their size and the initial level of cooperation in the community. If two socially separate groups are ecologically connected through resource leakage, cooperation in one can destabilize the other. These findings provide insights into possible effects of global change and spatial connectivity, indicating that there is no simple answer as to their effects on cooperation and sustainable resource use.

[1]  G. Hardin,et al.  Tragedy of the Commons , 1968 .

[2]  Chauncy D. Harris.  The New Encyclopaedia Britannica , 1975 .

[3]  J. Coleman.  Foundations of Social Theory , 1990 .

[4]  M. McKean.  Management of Traditional Common Lands in Japan , 1992 .

[5]  G. Brady.  Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action , 1993 .

[6]  Rajiv Sethi,et al.  The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use , 1996 .

[7]  E. Ostrom.  Collective action and the evolution of social norms , 2000, Journal of Economic Perspectives.

[8]  N. McCarthy,et al.  Linking Social and Ecological Systems: Management Practices and Social Mechanisms for Building Resilience , 2000 .

[9]  E. Fehr,et al.  Altruistic punishment in humans , 2002, Nature.

[10]  U. Fischbacher,et al.  Why Social Preferences Matter - the Impact of Non-Selfish Motives on Competition, Cooperation and Incentives , 2002 .

[11]  John Morgan,et al.  Pairwise competition and the replicator equation , 2003, Bulletin of mathematical biology.

[12]  J. Carpenter,et al.  Cooperation, trust, and social capital in Southeast Asian urban slums , 2004 .

[13]  E. Ostrom,et al.  Local Enforcement and Better Forests , 2005, World Development.

[14]  C. Withagen,et al.  Local and Global Interactions in an Evolutionary Resource Game , 2005 .

[15]  Peter Martinsson,et al.  Ostracism and the Provision of a Public Good - Experimental Evidence , 2005 .

[16]  Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game , 2005 .

[17]  A. Gardner,et al.  Cooperation Peaks at Intermediate Disturbance , 2007, Current Biology.

[18]  Montserrat Viladrich-Grau,et al.  On the sustainability of common property resources , 2007 .

[19]  E. Ostrom.  A diagnostic approach for going beyond panaceas , 2007, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[20]  E. Ansink,et al.  Climate Change and the Stability of Water Allocation Agreements , 2007 .

[21]  C. Withagen,et al.  Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game , 2005 .

[22]  K. Hagedorn,et al.  Particular requirements for institutional analysis in nature-related sectors , 2008 .

[23]  B. Bates,et al.  Climate change and water: technical paper of the intergovernmental panel on climate change , 2008 .

[24]  B. Bates,et al.  Climate change and water. , 2008 .

[25]  W. Barnaby.  Do nations go to war over water? , 2009, Nature.

[26]  U. Shamir,et al.  Water is a source of cooperation rather than war , 2009, Nature.

[27]  E. Ostrom.  A General Framework for Analyzing Sustainability of Social-Ecological Systems , 2009, Science.

[28]  M. S. Taylor.  Innis Lecture: Environmental Crises: Past, Present, and Future , 2009 .

[29]  D. Lobell,et al.  Warming increases the risk of civil war in Africa , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[30]  Water is a source of cooperation rather than war. , 2009, Nature.

[31]  Increasing inequality is already making shortages worse. , 2009, Nature.

[32]  Mark Zeitoun.  Water: resistance on the route towards a fair share for all , 2009, Nature.

[33]  Water: conflicts set to arise within as well as between states , 2009, Nature.

[34]  F. Maier-Rigaud,et al.  Ostracism and the Provision of a Public Good: Experimental Evidence , 2009 .

[35]  Theodora-Ismene Gizelis,et al.  Water resources, institutions, & intrastate conflict , 2010 .

[36]  Achim Schlüter,et al.  The grammar of institutions: The challenge of distinguishing between strategies, norms, and rules , 2010 .

[37]  Gwen Arnold,et al.  A Review of Design Principles for Community-based Natural Resource Management , 2010 .

[38]  Raúl López-Pérez,et al.  On approval and disapproval: Theory and experiments , 2010 .

[39]  Arne Traulsen,et al.  Social learning promotes institutions for governing the commons , 2010, Nature.

[40]  E. Ostrom,et al.  Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems , 2010, Science.

[41]  B. Blankespoor,et al.  Does precipitation and runoff variability affect treaty cooperation between states sharing international bilateral rivers , 2010 .

[42]  W. Lam.  Governing the Commons , 2010 .

[43]  Maja Schlüter,et al.  The survival of the conformist: social pressure and renewable resource management , 2010 .

[44]  A. Agrawal,et al.  Against mono-consequentialism: Multiple outcomes and their drivers in social–ecological systems , 2011 .

[45]  Mark A. Cane,et al.  Civil conflicts are associated with the global climate , 2011, Nature.

[46]  Jennifer Gabrys,et al.  Climate change and Aedes albopictus risks in China: current impact and future projection , 2023, Infectious Diseases of Poverty.

[47]  K. Arrow,et al.  Social-ecological systems as complex adaptive systems: modeling and policy implications , 2012, Environment and Development Economics.

[48]  Maja Schlüter,et al.  The Survival of the Conformist: Social Pressure and Renewable Resource Management , 2010, Journal of theoretical biology.

[49]  Reciprocal insurance among Kenyan pastoralists , 2013, Theoretical Ecology.

[50]  Hajime Shimao,et al.  Strict or Graduated Punishment? Effect of Punishment Strictness on the Evolution of Cooperation in Continuous Public Goods Games , 2013, PloS one.

[51]  K. Arrow,et al.  Social Norms and Global Environmental Challenges: The Complex Interaction of Behaviors, Values, and Policy , 2013, Bioscience.

[52]  Tatsuya Sasaki,et al.  The evolution of cooperation by social exclusion , 2012, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

[53]  M. Burke,et al.  Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict , 2013, Science.

[54]  S. Levin,et al.  Regime shifts in a social-ecological system , 2013 .

[55]  J. Grasman,et al.  Contagious cooperation, temptation, and ecosystem collapse * , 2013 .

[56]  Romina Martin,et al.  Describing human decisions in agent-based models - ODD + D, an extension of the ODD protocol , 2013, Environ. Model. Softw..

[57]  O. Edenhofer,et al.  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , 2013 .

[58]  Attila Szolnoki,et al.  If Cooperation Is Likely Punish Mildly: Insights from Economic Experiments Based on the Snowdrift Game , 2013, PloS one.

[59]  Yoh Iwasa,et al.  Graduated punishment is efficient in resource management if people are heterogeneous. , 2013, Journal of theoretical biology.

[60]  E. Ostrom.  Collective action and the evolution of social norms , 2000, Journal of Economic Perspectives.

[61]  Monica Yanez Pagans,et al.  Synthesis report: summary for policy makers , 2014 .

[62]  Simon A. Levin,et al.  Managing the climate commons at the nexus of ecology, behaviour and economics , 2014 .

[63]  L. Felkins.  The Social Dilemmas , 2015 .