Panel 9.4. Inequality, inequity, and the commons: Experimental advances
co-Chairs: Nathan Cook1 and Sechindra Vallury2
1Indiana University Indianapolis, 2University of Georgia
A growing body of research examines issues of inequality and inequity related to the governance of common-pool resources and local public goods. The common-pool resource literature argues that resource commons can create assignment problems—such as asymmetries between head-end and tail-end users of surface irrigation systems—that can lead to inequality and conflict. Some institutional scholarship emphasizes the importance of asymmetric resources and power for explaining how communities craft and sustain institutions for collective action. Finally, inequality and inequity are common themes in the body of policy research evaluating institutions and policies for polycentric commons governance. Much of this research finds that policy arrangements that purport to be ‘participatory,’ ‘deliberative,’ or ‘bottom-up’ can often deliver unequal benefits to the users of natural resources and local public goods, entrench the power of local elites, and fail to engage women and members of marginalized groups. This panel invites experimental research, broadly defined, that moves these literatures forward. This includes innovative laboratory experiments, survey or choice experiments, and randomized trials or quasi-experiments. In 2023, the Biennial IASC Conference in Nairobi, Kenya hosted two panels on this topic, and the purpose of this panel is to highlight advances in this area made since the Nairobi conference.
Panel 12.6. Using Games and Experiments for Behavioral Research: Opportunities and Challenges in an Era of Abundance
co-Chairs: Minwoo Ahn1, Nathan Cook2, Marco Janssen3, Sechindra Vallury4, and Daniel DeCaro5
1University of Arizona, 2Indiana University, 3Arizona State University, 4University of Georgia, 5University of Louisville
In commons studies, there is a long tradition of research using games and experiments to test hypotheses and simulate social interactions. These games and experiments have proven to be an exciting way to advance behavioral research in commons for over three decades. In this tradition, studies have found the importance of communication, enforcement, leadership, and informational uncertainties to improve (or undermine) cooperation. In this panel, we welcome presentations that study underlying mechanisms related but not limited to such factors as communication, rule enforcement, information. Methodologically, while behavioral research expands as digital platforms and tools are more available, there are still challenges to behavioral research including costly data collection using multi-player games and deriving systematic and comparable implications from abundant studies. While creativity is needed to further advance research such as combining existing game and experimental tools with AI-powered tools, we also need deep deliberation among researchers to sort out and make sense of contradictory findings. This panel will present different ways of conducting behavioral research using games and/or experiments and will engage in discussions on how to use existing/or new tools to overcome current challenges to better understand environmental and climate behavior around commons management.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM South College SCOW245
Effects of Information and Framing on Behavior in Unequal Social Dilemmas: Evidence From a Groundwater Experiment
in-person
Sechindra Vallury1, Nathan Cook2, and Minwoo Ahn3
1University of Georgia, USA, 2Indiana University Indianapolis, USA, 3University of Arizona, USA
Inequalities in common-pool resource scenarios and other social dilemmas have received considerable attention from researchers and policymakers. Potential remedies for these inequalities, however, are not well-understood. This study theorizes about the effects of information about inequality on resource users’ decisions, and on downstream outcomes such as whether inequality worsens or improves over time. We argue that the effects of information-based interventions depend upon the ways in which the information is framed, and also on who receives the information (e.g., advantaged resource users versus disadvantaged resource users). We use a framed groundwater game to test our theoretical expectations. The game assigned players’ costs of groundwater extraction at random, generating differential advantages for players within the same group. We also randomly assigned information about inequality. Some players were given information about inequality with a framing meant to prime pro-social motivations, other players were given information about inequality with a framing intended to prime self-interested motivations, and both groups were compared to a pure control group that was given no information about inequality. The experimental results suggest that framing conditions the effects of information on resource users’ decisions, and that policy interventions designed to address inequality through information may have unexpected effects without careful attention to framing or who the recipients of the information are.
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM South College SCOW245
Inequality Shapes Equity Perceptions of Conservation Enforcement Mechanisms
in-person
Nathan Cook1, Adriana Molina-Garzon1, Julia Naime2, and Arild Angelsen3
1Indiana University Indianapolis, USA, 2NMBU, Norway, 3Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
This paper examines the role of inequality in shaping perceptions of fairness of different conservation mechanisms. Agent heterogeneity and inequality have been recognized as an important element influencing collective action in environmental conservation contexts, as well as the effectiveness of institutional settings that seek to promote it. In unequal settings, fairness considerations have been shown to influence people’s behavior, but less attention has been paid to the specific mechanisms through which inequality can, in fact, affect fairness perceptions of the policies that promote environmental conservation. We utilized a multi-country CPR framed field experiment (FFE) implemented in Peru, Brazil, and Indonesia, framed as a linear public good game with forest extraction, where participants could make land use change decisions over multiple rounds. We exploit an inequality treatment introduced as differences in deforestation capacity—or the maximum number of forest plots that a participant could convert to agricultural land. In this context, the FFE included different institutional settings to reduce free-riding, or over-conversion of land use, including external government enforcement and peer enforcement. We use data from this experiment to examine equity perceptions of government and peer enforcement, and to assess differences in those equity perceptions between advantaged resource users (those with high deforestation capacity) and disadvantaged resource users (those with low deforestation capacity).
Tuesday, June 17, 2025 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM South College SCOW245
Gender Quotas & Broadening Participation in Forest User Groups
in-person
Nathan Cook1, Tara Grillos2, and Krister Andersson3
1Indiana University Indianapolis, USA, 2Purdue University, USA, 3University of Notre Dame, USA
The inclusion of women in environmental decision-making is widely believed to improve conservation outcomes and can be considered normatively desirable independent of outcomes. Gender quotas have been proposed as a policy intervention to ensure descriptive representation of women. In Nepal, Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) manage more than a third of forested land under the country’s community forestry program, which is regarded as a model forestry decentralization policy. Current governmental guidelines set a target of 50% women on the executive committee of these groups, though this target has not been fully achieved to date. One possible effect of a gender quota for executive committee membership is that the representation of women in leadership may motivate more people (perhaps especially other women) to participate in the CFUG more broadly. This study uses an original survey experiment framed around community-based forest management that was administered to survey respondents in 100 villages in rural Nepal (N = 1,243). The survey experiment exposed respondents to a vignette describing a hypothetical CFUG in the respondent’s village, which was randomly varied with respect to the number of women required to be included on the ten-member executive committee. This was followed by survey questions that asked respondents whether they would engage in a number of participation activities if the group existed in their village. We find that having more seats reserved for women on the executive council leads to a statistically significant increase in the probability that female respondents report being likely to join the group, and it also increases their likelihood of attending meetings. Furthermore, our results suggest that more women on the executive committee predicts a higher probability of ‘active’ participation’—joining the institution, attending a meeting, and speaking up at the meeting—among women respondents. Our findings suggest that gender quotas requiring the presence of a women in leadership roles can induce other women to engage more actively in community-based forest management, without discouraging participation among men.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Integrative Learning Center ILC 111
Disaggregating Information Interventions in a Groundwater Experiment
in-person
Sechindra Vallury1, Nathan Cook2, Susan Paudel1, Minwoo Ahn3, and Tom Koontz4
1University of Georgia, USA, 2Indiana University Indianapolis, USA, 3University of Arizona, USA, 4University of Washington Tacoma, USA
Groundwater extraction remains a critical issue worldwide, with overexploitation threatening agricultural sustainability and water security. As policymakers seek ways to encourage more sustainable use of common-pool resources, the role of information has garnered significant attention in nudging individual behaviors toward cooperative outcomes. However, much of this scholarship has narrowly focused on stable state outcomes—particularly cooperative and non-cooperative behaviors—without fully recognizing that decision-making is a dynamic process where behavior exists on a continuum. It is equally important to understand how different information-based interventions can generate significant behavioral shifts toward normatively positive or optimal outcomes. Additionally, previous scholarship in behavioral economics and CPR studies has typically treated information as a homogeneous variable, focusing on whether its presence or absence influences behavior. However, not all forms of information are equal, and they do not influence behavior in the same way. This highlights the need for a more nuanced understanding of different information types and their differential effects on behavior.
Our study seeks to address both these gaps through a controlled groundwater extraction experiment to investigate the relative effectiveness of distinct information treatments on individual extraction behavior. Specifically, we employ different types of information regarding the natural state (groundwater availability), the social state (extraction behaviors of other players), with varying levels of certainty and uncertainty. Our results will uncover which types of information prompt the most substantial shifts toward optimal groundwater extraction. These insights have significant implications for policy design and behavioral interventions in addressing the global challenge of groundwater over-extraction.
