Cooperative institutions for sustainable common pool resource management: Application to groundwater

Abstract

Beneficiaries of common pool resources (CPRs) may select available noncooperative and regulatory exogenous institutions for managing the resource, as well as cooperative management institutions. All these institutions may increase the long‐term gains, prolong the life of the resource, and help to escape the tragedy of the commons trap. Cooperative game theory approaches can serve as the backbone of cooperative CPR management institutions. This paper formulates and applies several commonly used cooperative game theoretic solution concepts, namely, the core, Nash‐Harsanyi, Shapley, and nucleolus. Through a numerical groundwater example, we show how CPR users can share the gains obtained from cooperation in a fair and efficient manner based on these cooperative solution concepts (management institutions). Although, based on their fairness rationales, various cooperative management institutions may suggest different allocations that are potentially acceptable to the users, these allocation solutions may not be stable as some users may find them unfair. This paper discusses how different methods, such as application of the plurality rule and power index, stability index, and propensity to disrupt concepts, can help identify the most stable and likely solutions for enforcing cooperation among the CPR beneficiaries. Furthermore, how the noncooperative managerial characteristics of the CPR users can affect the stability and acceptability of the different cooperative CPR management institutions is discussed, providing valuable policy insights for cooperative CPR management at community levels.

A new framework for resolving conflicts over transboundary rivers using bankruptcy methods

“…While various methods have been used in the literature to evaluate the stability and acceptability of water allocation solutions (Dinar and Howitt, 1997;Madani and Dinar, 2012;Read et al, 2014), these methods cannot be readily used to evaluate the acceptability of bankruptcy solutions. Therefore, a new quantitative stability evaluation method is developed in this study to evaluate the potential acceptability of the proposed bankruptcy solutions.…”

“…Ex post analysis of the stability of allocation solutions is common in the water resources literature (e.g., Dinar and Howitt, 1997;Teasley and McKinney, 2011;Madani and Dinar, 2012;Read et al, 2014;Madani and Hooshyar, 2014). Once different allocation solutions are developed, the stability of solutions is normally evaluated using quantitative measures to determine the solutions with higher potential acceptability.…”

Assessing Collective Measures in Rural Policy: The Effect of Minimum Participation Rules on the Distribution of Benefits from Irrigation Infrastructure

“…A vast literature has applied CGT solutions to issues related to the cooperative management of water and environmental resources [24,25], including, for example, the allocation of costs or benefits from water treatments [26,27], droughts management [28], groundwater [29] and multi-reservoir systems [30]. These studies have shed some lights on the implications and on the stability of cooperation without the complexity and difficulty of specifying in details the players' strategies as in a NCGT framework.…”

“…The SV captures more comprehensively the whole implications of different MPR than the NH solution. Nevertheless, by interpreting them as different distributional institutions, the comparison of the two solutions gives insights on the effect of MPR across different preferences and/or hypothesis on benefit distribution [29].…”

Government management and overexploitation of groundwater resources: absence of local community initiatives in Ardabil plain-Iran

“…Yet, in situations similar to Ardabil plain, prompt action is required. 12 Furthermore, the CPRs that are commonly studied are limited in size, while the Ardabil plain 13 covers a vast area of land with a large population. Therefore, in this paper, we use the CPR 14 perspective and the SES framework as the basis but build on them to address these 15 challenges.…”