Behavior in blind environmental dilemmas -

An experimental study

Martin BeckenkampMax-Planck-Institute for the Research on Collective Goods

Bonn – Germanybeckenk@coll.mpg.de

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

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”.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Method and Design

Method and Design:

Entscheidungssituationder anderen Person

19 groups, 38 subjects

12, 0 4, 4

I choose A

I choose B

A B

8, 8 0,12

Control Group

Method and Design:

Entscheidungssituationder anderen Person

19 groups, 38 subjects

Treatment group 3

12 4

I choose A

I choose B

A B

8 0

either 12 or 4

I choose A

I choose B

either 8 or 0

Method and Design:

Entscheidungssituationder anderen Person

19 groups, 38 subjects

Treatment group 2

Method and Design:

Entscheidungssituationder anderen Person

18 groups, 36 subjects

Treatment group 1

I choose A

I choose B

Method and Design

controlgroup

treatmentgroup 2

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)

treatmentgroup 1

treatmentgroup 3

Results

controlgroup

treatmentgroup 2

Cooperation rates33.0% 14.7% 48.8% 87.4%

N 1520 1440 1520 1440

treatmentgroup 1

treatmentgroup 3

Typical progessionstreatment 1

0

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1 4 7 1013161922252831343740

DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0

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DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0

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DD - 3 DC - 2 CD - 1 CC - 0

Treatment 4

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DD - 3, DC - 2, CD - 1, CC - 0

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treatment 1 treatment 2 treatment 3 ControlGruppe 1

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Results

Results

Random-effects GLS regression Number of obs = 6000Number 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

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.