This award funds a capstone conference for an interdisciplinary community that has held a number of workshops on the topic of Testing Theoretical Models of Individual Behavior in Dynamic Social Dilemmas. The group includes scientists from biology, ecological science, economics, sociology, political science, and anthropology. The workshop will identify promising directions for new research, including methodological and conceptual innovations that combine a wide range of methods include experiments, agent-based simulations, and field observations. The topics include group heterogeneity and fractionalization, the endogenous formation of institutions, and network analysis. The workshop participants will include junior investigators and graduate students; the results will help direct research into new methods that can be employed to help local governments understand a wide range of policy dilemmas.
This grant supported a meeting of an interdisciplinary group of scholars known as the Working Group on Testing Theoretical Models of Individual Behavior in Dynamic Social Dilemmas (SD Working Group, hereafter). This group consists of scholars and students from economics, political science, sociology, ecology and other fields focused on a single set of problems involving public goods and commons problems. The group has been meeting since 2002, and one of the founders was Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for her pathbreaking work on solutions to problems like these. Scholars and students who participated in the group’s early meetings have been enormously influential, and the insights and creativity flowing from the group have been notable, with important developments in theory and practice dealing with social dilemma situations and the political problems associated with them. The meeting was held on the campus of Caltech, February 8-9, 2013. The workshop made two main contributions. First, it brought together a diverse set of faculty and PhD students from the US, Canada, the Netherlands, the UK and Korea, covering the fields of economics, political science, sociology and ecology. Second, it provided a direction for future research and applications, including methodological and conceptual innovations. Papers from the conference were brought together and will be published in special issues of two prominent journals, one in economics and one in political science. The papers themselves cover a broad range of ideas and methods, all designed to help with the practical problems associated with finding ways to improve the provision of public goods, and to help manage common property resources more efficiently. It is in the nature of a workshop that there are no specific findings that are produced by the workshop itself. However, the exchange of ideas, techniques, and insights among the participants leads to future developments. Many of the papers in the workshop and in the special issues focus on studies that are designed to further understanding of the specific mechanisms underlying the production of public goods and the management of common pool resources. The ultimate purpose of these studies is to develop policies and practices that enhance cooperation in the production and management of these important resources. Elinor Ostrom spent much of her career studying the evolved, context-specific mechanisms used to enhance cooperation in the production and use of shared resources. Thus the focus of the workshop tended to be on questions such as how the structure of sanctioning mechanisms can enhance cooperation in particular settings, or how the perceived legitimacy of an enforcement mechanism can affect the outcome. Many studies presented at the workshop focused on findings from laboratory and field experiments. Others addressed the role of social norms and identity as influences on cooperative behavior. It is also clear that social networks play an important role in the spread and enforcement of social norms. Several papers addressed the issue of variation within a society of behavior as regards common pool resources and public goods, and the difficulty in developing a political consensus in such diverse societies. Probably the most important theme of the workshop, however, had to do with the emergence and legitimacy of mechanisms or institutions designed to improve common pool resource management and public goods production. A result that is emerging in this literature is the idea that institutions developed by the participants themselves – within a specific context – are most likely to be successful in solving social dilemma problems. Broader impacts: A significant broader impact is the development of policy relevant tools for addressing social dilemma problems in the field. Many development projects funded by USAID and other international development agencies have frequently assumed that social dilemmas in the field require centralized direction and funding to solve. The failure rate of these projects is high. Our SD Working group reaches out to international and national policy makers to encourage projects based on firmer theory and empirical evidence. The SD Working Group also plays a significant role in mentoring graduate students and junior faculty through participation in the meetings and research projects. Finally, the work of this group has had a substantial impact on other fields, including environmental engineering, and civil engineering, and disaster planning.
