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Behavior in blind environmental dilemmas - An experimental study

Behavior in blind environmental dilemmas - An experimental study. Martin Beckenkamp Max-Planck-Institute for the Research on Collective Goods Bonn – Germany beckenk@coll.mpg.de. Overview. Introduction: Many environmental problems are environmental dilemmas

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Behavior in blind environmental dilemmas - An experimental study

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  1. Behavior in blind environmental dilemmas - An experimental study Martin Beckenkamp Max-Planck-Institute for the Research on Collective GoodsBonn – Germanybeckenk@coll.mpg.de

  2. Overview • Introduction: • Many environmental problems are environmental dilemmas • Environmental dilemmas often are blind dilemmas • My hypothesis: Blind dilemmas are the most tragic dilemmas • Experimental setup and results • Discussion and policy implication

  3. Introduction: Most environmental dilemmas are blind dilemmas Many environmental problems are environmental dilemmas: • Hardin (1968) “Tragedy of the commons”. • Ostrom et al. (2002) “Drama of the commons”.

  4. Introduction: Most environmental dilemmas are blind dilemmas Above that: Stakeholders in an environmental dilemma often are not aware of their social interdependencies. • Minimal social situation • Environmental dilemmas are blind dilemmas

  5. Minimal social situations • A game with incomplete information • Players do only know their own strategy sets and payoffs. • In its most extreme form, players are even oblivious of the fact that their decisions are choices in a game or strategy cf. Coleman, 2005, p. 217

  6. Minimal social situations • Many argue that due to Pavlov-strategies or “win stay, lose shift” subjects learn cooperation in prisoners’ dilemmas with minimal information (Colman, 2005, p. 222). • My general hypothesis is contrary to that: Minimal information leads to high defection-rates.

  7. Cooperation in minimal social situations? • But how can Pavlov-strategy results be integrated with my hypothesis? • Other design: information about the payoff-matrix (i.e., not really blind). • Confounding of games: mutual fate game (Kelley, 1968). • Negative payoffs or even shocks.

  8. Method and Design To summarize the main issue of the experiment: Does it make a difference whether participants know that they are playing with another person? In many environmental dilemmas, the agents are unaware of the interdependence of their actions. It would be expected that their decisions change once they know about the actual social interdependencies in the situation.

  9. Method and Design The experiment consists of four treatment groups to clarify the issue: The impact of reducing information about social interdependencies in a prisoners’ dilemma.

  10. Method and Design: Entscheidungssituation der anderen Person Control Group 19 groups, 38 subjects

  11. A B I choose A 8 0 I choose B 12 4 Method and Design: Entscheidungssituation der anderen Person Treatment group 3 19 groups, 38 subjects

  12. Method and Design: Entscheidungssituation der anderen Person Treatment group 2 either 8 or 0 I choose A I choose B either 12 or 4 19 groups, 38 subjects

  13. I choose A I choose B Method and Design: Entscheidungssituation der anderen Person Treatment group 1 18 groups, 36 subjects

  14. Method and Design treatment group 1 treatment group 2 treatment group 3 control group 40 periods with partner design in each treatment Ring-Measure of Social Values afterwards Experiment programmed in z-tree (Fischbacher 2007)Subjects recruited with ORSEE (Greiner 2003)

  15. Results treatment group 1 treatment group 2 treatment group 3 control group Cooperation rates 33.0% 14.7% 48.8% 87.4%N 1520 1440 1520 1440

  16. treatment 1 Treatment 2 Treatment 3 Treatment 4 DD - 3, DC - 2, CD - 1, CC - 0 DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0 DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0 DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0 3 3 3 3 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 Typical progessions

  17. Results treatment 1 treatment 2 treatment 3 Control

  18. Results Random-effects GLS regression Number of obs = 6000 Number of groups = 150 (Std. Err. adjusted for 75 clusters in group_ID) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ decision | Coef. Std. Err. z P>|z| [95% Conf. Interval] -------------+---------------------------------------------------------------- treat_1 | .544481 .0728862 7.47 0.000 .4016267 .6873353 treat_3 | .7276316 .0756018 9.62 0.000 .5794548 .8758084 treat_2 | .3868421 .1008136 3.84 0.000 .1892511 .5844331 period | .0024853 .0009502 2.62 0.009 .000623 .0043476 _cons | .0747092 .0605195 1.23 0.217 -.0439069 .1933253 -------------+---------------------------------------------------------------- R-sq: within = 0.0076 between = 0.5197

  19. Discussion • In social dilemmas (!): • Information matters! Information about social interdependencies may lead to higher cooperation rates. • Information about expected payoffs without knowledge about social interdependencies may reduce cooperation. • Political implications: Get people out of their veil of ignorance.

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