Robustness of norm-driven cooperation in the commons.

ABSTRACT: 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-variab

SUBMITTER: Schluter M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4721099 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature