The survival of the conformist: social pressure and renewable resource management
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Working Paper 35
Abstract
This paper examines the role of other-regarding behavior as a mechanism for the establishment and maintenance of cooperation in resource use under variable social and environmental conditions.
By coupling resource stock dynamics with social dynamics concerning compliance to a social norm prescribing non-excessive resource extraction in a common pool resource, we show that when reputational considerations matter and a sufficient level of social stigma affects the violators of a norm, sustainable outcomes are achieved.
We find large parameter regions where norm-observing and norm-violating types coexist, and analyse to what extent such coexistence depends on the environment.
Alessandro Tavoni, Maja Schlüter and Simon Levin