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Relentless overexploitation of natural resources has led to resource scarcity, environmentaldegradation and rising inequalities, straining social-ecological systems to breaking point.Ecosystems providing shared resources often respond non-linearly to resource pressuresbeyond critical thresholds, so-called regime shifts, jeopardizing the stable and just provisionof natural resources. Avoiding these critical thresholds is imperative, as not everyone canadapt to drastic changes in resource availability and distribution. In an unequal world wherecapacities to adapt to crossing critical thresholds vary substantially across individuals, groupsand countries, our understanding of behavioural responses remains limited. This thesisexplores whether and how inequality in adaptive capacities within groups sharing a naturalresource influence both the likelihood of groups crossing a critical threshold and groupdynamics. 160 students from the University of Exeter participated in an online Common-PoolResource (CPR) laboratory experiment comparing inequality and baseline treatments. Whileunequal adaptive capacities did not affect group’s likelihood of crossing the threshold, theynegatively impacted social dynamics and perceptions. Participants with low adaptive capacity(LAC) responded to the threat of the threshold by reducing their harvest significantly whencompared to participants with high adaptive capacity (HAC). Therefore, latent inequalities inthe choice context created real inequalities in resource allocation. Furthermore, HACparticipants lacked identification with the disadvantaged group as evidenced by lowerperceived group efficacy and no reduction in harvest. When the harvest was shared unequally,inequalities were more pronounced in the inequality treatment compared to the baseline.Investigating emotions revealed unexpected findings: Participants did not strongly experienceguilt despite its relevance in prior research, instead, positive emotions, particularlycompassion, wer, Inequality and the Biosphere: Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals in an Unequal World

Small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are significant for poverty alleviation, but are threatened by over-exploitation and climate change effects such as drastic drops in regrowth rates. How will fishers adapt? To shed light on this, we ran a common-pool resource experiment with SSF fishers in Thailand. Our results show that groups confronted with a potential abrupt drop in the regrowth rate are more likely to form cooperative agreements compared to groups not confronted with such a drop, which theory cannot predict. However, groups that form cooperative agreements do not necessarily manage the resource efficiently; many groups under-exploit. Over-exploitation is driven by individual characteristics, e.g., if individuals can diversify income, and if they are born outside the village. We conclude that more systematic exploration of the role of socio-economic factors, and how these factors interact with ecological conditions facing fishers, are needed. Our work can be seen as one step in this direction.

We investigate the behavioural responses of natural common-pool resource users to three policy interventions-sanctioned quotas, information provisioning, and a combination of both. We focus on situations in which users find utility in multiple resources (pastures and wild animal stocks) that all stem from the same ecosystem with complex dynamics, and management could trigger a regime shift, drastically altering resource regrowth. We performed a framed field experiment with 384 villagers from communities managing common-pool wildlife in Zimbabwe. We find that user groups are likely to manage these natural resources more efficiently when facing a policy intervention (either a sanctioned quota, receiving information about a drastic drop in the stocks' regrowth below a threshold, or a combination of both), compared to groups facing no intervention. A sanctioned quota is likely to perform better than providing information about the existence of a threshold. However, having information about the threshold also leads to higher efficiency and fewer depletion cases, compared to a situation without any intervention. The main contribution of this study is to provide insights that can inform policymakers and development practitioners about the performance of concrete and feasible policy interventions for community wildlife conservation in Southern Africa.

This paper presents a novel experimental design that allows testing how users of a common-pool resource respond to an endogenously driven drastic drop in the supply of the resource. We show that user groups will manage a resource more efficiently when confronted with such a non-concave resource growth function, compared to groups facing a logistic growth function. Even among cooperative groups there is a significant behavioral difference, although theory predicts there should not be. We argue that effectiveness of communication is endogenous to the problem; the threat of reaching a critical tipping point, beyond which the growth rate will drop drastically, triggers more effective communication within the group, enabling stronger commitment for cooperation and more knowledge sharing, which together explains the results. We argue that the insights generated by this study can be seen as one of many, but nevertheless important, contributions towards an increased understanding of the interactions between human behavior and the environment in common-pool resource systems.

Ecosystems can undergo regime shifts that potentially lead to a substantial decrease in the availability of provisioning ecosystem services. Recent research suggests that the frequency and intensity of regime shifts increase with growing anthropogenic pressure, so understanding the underlying social-ecological dynamics is crucial, particularly in contexts where livelihoods depend heavily on local ecosystem services. In such settings, ecosystem services are often derived from common-pool resources. The limited capacity to predict regime shifts is a major challenge for common-pool resource management, as well as for systematic empirical analysis of individual and group behavior, because of the need for extensive preshift and postshift data. Unsurprisingly, current knowledge is mostly based on theoretical models. We examine behavioral group responses to a latent endogenously driven regime shift in a laboratory experiment. If the group exploited the common-pool resource beyond a certain threshold level, its renewal rate dropped drastically. To determine how the risk of such a latent shift affects resource management and collective action, we compared four experimental treatments in which groups were faced with a latent shift with different probability levels (0.1, 0.5, 0.9, 1.0). Our results suggest that different probability levels do not make people more or less likely to exploit the resource beyond its critical potential threshold. However, when the likelihood of the latent shift is certain or high, people appear more prone to agree initially on a common exploitation strategy, which in turn is a predictor for averting the latent shift. Moreover, risk appears to have a positive effect on collective action, but the magnitude of this effect is influenced by how risk and probabilities are communicated and perceived., AuthorCount:3

Collective action holds the key to many sustainability challenges, from local to global scales. Whether it is to manage community-based fisheries or take action against climate change or biodiversity loss – the question on how to overcome the conflict between individual and collective interests (i.e., social dilemmas) has attracted and fascinated scholars from various disciplines. This has led to substantial progress over the past decades in the field of Sustainability Science. However, many puzzles remain, since solving social dilemmas is far from trivial. Until recently, most research has emphasized understanding social interactions and institutional factors as they relate to collective action emergence, sustainability and success. This thesis takes a social-ecological systems perspective on collective action problems, more specifically, commons dilemmas at the local scale, and incorporates both social, and ecological sources of complexity. Evidence suggests that with increasing anthropogenic pressure, the likelihood for abrupt and potentially undesirable ecosystem change increases. This might further complicate the emergence of collective action and successful ecosystem management. At the same time, such potential changes make successful collective action even more critical. This thesis addresses these challenges by identifying critical social-ecological factors and mechanisms underpinning successful collective action and sustainable ecosystem management in the face of complex ecosystem dynamics and associated uncertainties. In Paper 1 and Paper 2 of this licentiate thesis, we experimentally assess the risk for, and effect of undesirable, endogenously driven non-linear ecosystem change, i.e., a regime shift. We use laboratory common-pool resource games, with students as participants. We show that such a very likely or certain regime shift can mobilize collective action, and that it can serve as focal point around which people coordinate their actions, thereby pro

Environment and development agendas are increasingly being characterised by regional-scale initiatives. This trend is in part motivated by recognition of the need to account for global drivers of change (e.g., climate change, migration, and globalisation), the aspirations of achieving large-scale ecological goals (such as maintaining ecosystem processes), and reconciling potentially conflicting priorities in multi-use planning. However, regional-scale governance is challenging and there is little theoretical guidance or empirical evidence to suggest how it can be achieved. This paper uses the Institutional Analysis and Development framework to highlight the diverse contextual factors that challenge governance of a large-scale marine common, using an example of the Coral Triangle Initiative. The analysis points to the need for a critical, reflexive approach to the Coral Triangle Initiative if it is to effectively navigate diverse contexts and reconcile multiple objectives in the region. Recognising the heterogeneous, multi-scale and interlinked nature of large-scale marine systems is critical. Coping with contextual complexity will require innovative approaches that strive to be inclusive of varied perspectives and actors, enable and support effective collective-choice arrangements at lower levels of organisation, and organise and link diverse institutional arrangements at multiple scales. Large-scale marine governance will also involve a great deal of experimentation and regular adjustments to governance arrangements to account for the dynamic nature of regional commons.