Koontz, Tom

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.

Games are increasingly being used as intervention tools to facilitate sustainable commons management among community members. Games provide key benefits by enabling participants to experience, reflect, and experiment (Kolb and Kolb 2009). In these low-risk environments, games allow players to engage with the complexities of social-ecological systems, explore risky behaviors, and create and negotiate rules (Falk et al., 2023; Janssen et al., 2023). The resulting social learning can extend beyond the framing of the game, developing institutional capacity for sustainable commons management (Meinzen-Dick et al. 2018). While these benefits are well-documented in games used in field experiments, similar advantages may arise when games are played in classroom settings. To explore this, we played the fishing game with undergraduate students in two institutions in the United States and one institution from Canada. The fishing game simulates common-pool resource (CPR) concepts such as communication, trust, and rules through a sustainability dilemma. Student reflections from the game reveal three main findings. One, students highlight that communication, without transparency and trust, is inadequate for fostering cooperation among different groups. Second, students expressed difficulty in grappling with the dilemma of needs of the broader community versus one’s own community. Finally, with challenges in crafting institutions for cooperation, students call for increased government intervention, including more regulation and stricter punitive measures on rule violators, even while expressing distrust in the government. Overall, students gain cognitive learning from the game—understanding key concepts like communication, trust, and institutions—while grappling with real-world dilemmas of sustainable resource management. At the same time, it is unclear whether games may promote normative learning, where deeper shifts in norms and values occur. This suggests that while games may be effective at teaching CPR concepts, more research is needed to understand whether games can foster the value changes for long-term sustainable behavior.