Games for experiential learning: triggering collective changes in commons management

Abstract

As resource users interact and impose externalities onto each other, institutions are needed to coordinate resource use, create trust, and provide incentives for sustainable management. Coordinated collective action can play a key role in enabling communities to manage natural resource commons more sustainably. But when such collective action is not present, what can be done to foster it? We contribute to the understanding of how experiential learning through games can affect behavioral change, potentially leading to more sustainable commons management. We present a conceptual framework describing the most important processes involved in experiential learning games. The framework highlights the importance of the game context for achieving game outcomes. We list game features that have been argued to influence learning and behavioral determinants, focusing on the game narrative and experience, game rules, and attributes of players. We briefly describe how each game feature influences the processes in the framework. Next, we apply the conceptual framework to examine design features that were particularly important for influencing behavioral drivers in commons management in three intervention cases from India relating to groundwater, surface water, and forests. Our conceptual reflections underpin the need to debate about underlying assumptions in using games as intervention tools. Making assumptions transparent can help to understand why or under what conditions experiential learning works or fails. There is a critical need for more systematic choices of the right tools for the right purpose. This includes participants of the experiential learning who must be able to relate the game to their real life. A social dilemma in the game should at least, in its basic structure, represent a real-life dilemma. We close by highlighting future research needs both from the conceptual behavioral change as well as the game design perspective.

Combining and crafting institutional tools for groundwater governance

“…Intensive pumping can draw down aquifer levels and follow pathways that are economically inefficient, socially inequitable, and environmentally unsustainable. (Van and Shah 2003); conventional regulation (Molle and Closas 2016); information-based (Andhra Pradesh Farmer Managed Groundwater Systems) (Venkata et al 2013;Verma et al 2012;Reddy, Pavelic, and Reddy 2021); Experiential learning (Ruth Meinzen-Dick et al 2018;FES 2022;Falk et al Forthcoming); Western India (Shah 2009;Shah et al 2018); North China Plain (Kinzelbach et al 2022).…”

“…Communities often had existing rules governing use of surface water sources, but had not developed effective rules to control groundwater use. When FES found that conventional "teaching" about groundwater management did not have a sufficient impact, they piloted games played by groups of farmers as experiential learning to help improve understanding and cooperation over groundwater (Ruth Meinzen-Dick et al 2016;Falk et al Forthcoming). In community debriefing after the games, participants discussed how the games related to their experiences with groundwater, and community resource persons presented information about water table trends.…”

“…Using institutional tools effectively to improve groundwater governance may depend on choosing and adapting combinations of tools that fit with conditions and objectives, developing toolkits of institutions suited to particular contexts. Experiential games are one example of a tool for improving groundwater governance, as discussed further below (Ruth Meinzen-Dick et al 2018;Falk et al Forthcoming). However, different conditions may require different tools, for example a different game for surface irrigation, or a different approach for large alluvial aquifers where local scale efforts may have little impact on their own.…”

Getting Ahead of the Game: Experiential Learning for Groundwater Governance in Ethiopia

“…Group dynamic games that simulate real-life resource use and multi-user interactions and connect social dilemmas to action situations have shown promise as an intervention tool for experiential learning about sustainable CPR management (Becu et al 2017, den Haan & van der Voort, 2018Ferrero et al, 2018). A growing body of literature explores the use of group games to facilitate engagement with communities to improve understanding of socioecological systems and stimulate discussions about the need and options to improve natural resource governance (Falk et al 2023). They are useful for identifying patterns in thinking and behavior, testing management options, as well as shaping "mental models" and understanding of relationships both among users and between users and the resource.…”

“…Participating communities were significantly more likely to adopt rules governing groundwater use, compared with control communities . While such games are not a silver bullet, they can complement other capacity support to shape mental models around groundwater resources and empower communities to strengthen local governance (Falk et al, 2023).…”