Governing the commons involves navigating the interplay between different types of infrastructure (natural, social, hard, soft, and human). The Coupled Infrastructure Systems (CIS) Framework was developed to study the role of institutional arrangements, political processes and human decision making in providing and managing shared infrastructures and has been applied to traditional natural commons (forests, irrigation systems, wildlife), but also the built environment (transportation, urban water, energy), and even the lunar surface.
This panel invites recent work of scholars using the CIS framework, especially in the context of transitions. CIS are increasingly exposed to rapid changes in their social ((geo)political systems, demographics, economic systems) and natural (climate change, resource depletion) components. Hence there is a need to understand how to govern CIS in rapidly changing conditions. Examples include (1) the energy transitions that cope with increasing instability of electricity systems, harmful impacts from mining, and injustice of energy access; (2) urban water transitions that must balance rapid changes in water supply and demand with physical infrastructure; (3) urban mobility challenges of co-occurring rapid increases of cars and motorcycles, diffusion of clean fuel options, self-driving cars, and a need for more and better roads.
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.
Leveraging collective action for resource sustainability has become increasingly important in a context of high climate uncertainty, and continued resource exploitation. But engaging in collective action requires coordination and communication among individuals in order to make and implement resource allocation, use and management decisions. Institutions, or the set of formal and informal rules and regulations that govern human behavior, play a crucial role in mediating collective responses to shared resource governance challenges. Rapid urbanization leads to social and institutional transitions, often creating uncertainty and impacting the ways in which people interact and engage in collective action for meeting sustainability goals. This study aims to understand how urban transitions influence collective decision-making for shared resource governance using the case of groundwater in India, the largest user in the world. With a focus on peri-urban Bangalore, one of the fastest urbanizing regions in the country, the study applies the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) Framework to investigate shifts in institutional factors that impact the appropriation, provisioning and management of groundwater in a peri-urban setting. We will employ content analysis to analyze data obtained via semi-structured interviews with key actors – farmers, residents, government officials, local representatives – who are closely involved in decision-making around groundwater use and management. In addition, policy documents that outline rules and regulations around groundwater access, use and management will be analyzed to understand the formal institutional arrangements that inform groundwater decision-making. We hypothesize that urban transition exacerbates institutional uncertainty, creating confusion around shared goals, actors involved, and rules in use, thereby reducing propensity for collective action. Understanding these dynamics is essential for developing strategies to manage natural resources sustainably amid urban growth and development pressures.
Over a dozen nations have expressed plans to engage in robotic and human missions to the Moon. The Artemis campaign explicitly aims for sustainable exploration, and its current plans include crewed and robotic operations on the lunar surface. With growing interest in lunar surface exploration and sustainability goals, it is important and timely to explore what lunar surface sustainability means. Based on a survey among diverse stakeholder groups, we derive insights into the different dimensions of lunar surface sustainability.
We use the coupled infrastructure systems framework for evaluating lunar surface sustainability. By understanding the interactions of diverse actors in the operations and political economy of moon missions, we aim to identify critical trade-off situations. We will apply the CIS framework to the lunar south polar region, a location of interest for multiple governmental, commercial, and other actors.
Overuse of shared resources is a major concern for many communities. While the positive effect of deliberation and facilitation on collective action outcomes are well-recognized in the literature, there is no conclusive theory on why deliberation improves cooperative outcomes. Studies show that formal mechanism -- rule-based group deliberation – can improve cooperation among resource users, but less is known about the role of informal discourse in shared resource governance. We fill this gap by asking: what is the role of informal discourse in forging cooperation and trust? How formal mechanism intersects with informal mechanism in shaping positive outcomes? We use data from Foraging game that includes 339 rounds of communication from 113 groups and 452 participants. To answer this question, we apply structural topic models to the game dataset. Preliminary analysis suggests that there are different types of informal discourses and that the sequence and timing of informal discourse tend to have influence on cooperative outcomes. We contribute to the theory building on how informal discourse intersects with formal mechanisms in shaping positive outcomes.
Urbanization is a pervasive global phenomenon that continues to significantly transform human-nature interactions, accelerate resource exploitation and pose challenges to effective resource governance. It leads to changes in institutions - or the set of rules and regulations that govern human behavior; fundamentally altering the ways in which people interact and engage in collective action for addressing resource management challenges. Understanding these shifts is crucial for managing the complexities of resource governance in rapidly urbanizing contexts. Behavioral experiments have been valuable in studying individual and collective action, providing deeper insights into the factors that shape social interaction patterns governing shared resource management. However, their potential to elucidate how macro-level phenomenon like urbanization may shape local-level resource governance dynamics is yet to be fully explored.
This study uses experimental data from the implementation of the groundwater game - a resource dilemma game that simulates the effects of individual and collective crop choices on groundwater management. The game was implemented in 300+ villages across 3 arid states in India, the largest user of groundwater in the world. The paper examines the effects of factors like proximity to towns and cities, along with access to road infrastructure and markets, and land holding on cooperation within the game. Results from preliminary analysis show that there is a significant negative relationship between urbanization and cooperation within the game. In other words, communities that are closer to urban centers had lower levels of cooperation for maintaining the shared resource when compared to communities farther away from urban areas. These findings suggest that as urbanization continues to accelerate, it is important to investigate its implications on human behavior, and collective action for addressing environmental challenges.
Resource governance problems are characterized by social dilemmas and complexity of the resource dynamics. Most experimental research on resource management focuses on the social dilemmas participants need to overcome to achieve cooperative outcomes. However, various studies suggest that the understanding of the dynamics of the system may play a role in the performance of groups. There is also evidence that people are more risk averse if uncertainty is caused by decisions of other people instead of uncertainty of nature.
In order to understand the role of resource complexity in more detail, we study the decision-making in a one-person dynamic resource game, varying different types of components of the resource complexity and removing the social dilemma component. Earlier work with single-person decision-making has focused on the understanding of systems dynamics, and the role of information. In this presentation we will present the results of a pre-registered experiment were we focus on additional aspects of resource complexity, that have been explored only in the context of social dilemmas: external shocks, risk of ending round, threshold impacting resource dynamics, and state of the resource. We also test the impact of uncertainty as risk, i.e. known probabilities of certain outcomes, and ambiguity, i.e. unknown probabilities of the outcomes.
The increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events are challenging the ability of communities and individuals to recover from such adverse events. Insurance is one way to protect against the financial losses associated with natural hazards. However, insurance policies are becoming less accessible in high-risk areas, impacting households’ ability to cope with natural hazards. These changes in the risk and insurance landscape raise questions about how to manage risk, who should bear the cost of increasing climate-related damages and what are perceptions of fairness when it comes to sharing the costs of risk exposure. We investigate fairness ideals in the contest of insurance choices through an experiment where participants decide whether to subsidize risk in insurance plans. We test whether unequal access to risk reduction investments influences willingness to share the cost of risk. Findings are based on an online behavioral experiment conducted with a U.S. representative sample.
