Slow and deliberate cooperation in the commons

Abstract

We test how fast and slow thought processes affect cooperation for sustainability by 18 manipulating time pressure in a dynamic common pool resource experiment. Sustainable 19 management of shared resources critically depends on decisions in the current period to leave 20 enough stock so that future generations are able to draw upon the remaining limited natural 21 resources. An intertemporal common pool resource game represents a typical dynamic for social 22 dilemmas involving natural resources. Using one such game, we analyse decisions throughout time. We find that people in this context deplete the common resource to a greater extent under time pressure, which leads to greater likelihood of stock collapse. Preventing resource collapse while managing natural resources requires actively creating decision environments that facilitate the cognitive capacity needed to support sustainable cooperation. 28 Overextraction of natural resources in the present can lead to negative consequences for society 29 and is at odds with most definitions of sustainable development (1). According to Pearson (2), 30 "the core of the idea of sustainability is the concept that current decisions should not damage 31 prospects for maintaining or improving living standards in the future." Essential for 32 sustainability and important to many aspects of human and animal behaviour (3-6) is 33 cooperation. Societies with imperfect, incomplete, and shared property rights face social 34

The Cognitive Foundations of Cooperation

“…Investigating the cognitive determinants of behavior requires accounting for idiosyncratic characteristics, which in turn requires appropriate designs and identification strategies. These findings have further widespread repercussions, from suggesting a paradigm shift in how cognitive determinants of behavior should be investigated, to immediate policy implications (Vollan and Ostrom, 2010;Mani et al, 2013;Brozyna et al, 2018). In particular, interventions to promote cooperation can only be successful if they account for heterogeneity in behavior.…”

Exploring optimal institutional incentives for public cooperation

“…For the above described reason our work only considers the optimal control problems to explore the optimal control strategies with the minimal cumulative cost. Indeed, the time for the system to reach the desired state is also an important quantity for the governance of the public goods [34,63,64]. Thus it could be interesting to consider the performance index of time as the objective functional into the optimal control problems of institutional incentives as a possible extension.…”

Making the smart meter social promotes long-term energy conservation

“…Given the pressing need to mitigate global carbon emissions, changes in consumer behaviours are needed alongside structural solutions for the translation of behavioural science into interventions (Allcott and Mullainathan, 2010), although focusing on the time pressure issue for sustainability promotion could eventually turn out as a non-winning strategy (Brozyna et al, 2018). Instead, according to the evidence reported here, a simple addition to the already widespread smart meter technology-conveying a social comparison to a relevant referent group-or costand resources-effective applications through social networks or internet of things, offer readily implementable strategies to promote long-term energy reductions.…”