Environmental uncertainty in commons dilemmas: A survey of experimental research

We  conducted a systematic review of experimental resource dilemma studies that manipulated environmental uncertainty. We classify the collected studies according to whether the incentives reflected a coordination or a cooperation problem. We provide, for each type of incentive, a general overview o...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cesar Mantilla
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Utrecht University Library Open Access Journals (Publishing Services) 2018-10-01
Series:International Journal of the Commons
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.thecommonsjournal.org/articles/857
Description
Summary:We  conducted a systematic review of experimental resource dilemma studies that manipulated environmental uncertainty. We classify the collected studies according to whether the incentives reflected a coordination or a cooperation problem. We provide, for each type of incentive, a general overview of the strategic setting and its adaptation to the experimental paradigm. We find that, regardless of the type of incentives, environmental uncertainty has an efficiency-diminishing effect in most of the experimental settings. We also present and discuss a selective set of experiments mimicking the climate change problem, in which the proposed incentives combine elements from coordination and cooperation problems. We conclude with a general discussion of the findings about how different sources of environmental uncertainty affect efficiency in collective action problems, paying special attention to climate change issues.
ISSN:1875-0281