Browsing by Author "Rollins, Nathan D."

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Cooperation in Asymmetric Commons Dilemmas
(2012) Pérez, Irene; Baggio, Jacopo A.; Rollins, Nathan D.; Janssen, Marco A.
"This paper is a study of collective action in asymmetric access to a common resource. An example is an irrigation system with upstream and downstream resource users. While both contribute to the maintenance of the common infrastructure, the upstream participant has rst access to the resource. Results of our two-player asymmetric commons game show that privileged resource access player invest more than the downstream players. Investments by the downstream player into the common resource are rewarded by a higher share from the common resource by the upstream player. Decisions are mainly explained by the levels of trust and trustworthiness. Introducing uncertainty in the production function of the common resource did not aect the results in a significant way."
Lab Experiments on Irrigation Games Under Uncertainty
(2014) Rollins, Nathan D.; Baggio, Jacopo A.; Perez, Irene; Janssen, Marco A.
"Research on collective action and common pool resources is extensive. However, little work has concentrated on the effect of uncertainty in resource availability and collective action, especially in the context of asymmetric access to resources. Earlier works have demonstrated that uncertainty often leads to a reduction of collective action in the governance of shared resources. Here we assess how uncertainty in the resource availability may impact collective action. We perform a behavioral experiment of an irrigation dilemma. In this dilemma participants invest first into a public fund that generates water resources for the group, which is subsequently appropriated one participant at the time from head-end to tail-end. The amount of resource generated for the given investment level is determined by a payo table and a stochastic event representing rainfall. Results show that access asymmetry and resulting inequalities dominate any effects from uncertainty about the resource condition. The strategic uncertainty about the decisions of other players dominates potential effects from the environmental uncertainty."
Private-Public Collaborations in Natural Resource Management: Forging Shared Action Arenas Between Heterogeneous Actors
(2012) Rollins, Nathan D.
"Resource managers have become increasingly cognizant of the value of integrating stakeholders into decision-making processes. Considering the strong relationship between stakeholder activities and ecological services, it is worthwhile to think about how stakeholders can be engaged to advance management goals, rather than just viewed as 'users' that must be managed or restricted to protect the target resource. In his 1993 National Performance Review, Vice-President Gore directed federal resource management agencies to implement landscape-level 'ecosystem management' strategies, including inter-agency coordination and citizen participatory management. However, actual successes remained elusive, as no one actually knew what these arrangements should look like or how to construct them. Frustrated by years of counter-productive conflicts between government land managers, conservation groups, and private stakeholders, a group of ranchers in Arizona and New Mexico formed a cooperative to find an alternative path out of the rangeland conflicts by bringing together ranchers, environmentalists, and research scientists. This paper examines the story of the Malpai Borderlands Group, its formation, and a few key struggles that they faced to become one of the leading examples of public-private collaborations in the US. This paper will argue that both the scope and key features of their success is best understood within the institutional context of the rangelands and its complex regulatory landscape. The significant political and institutional obstacles the ranchers faced was a heritage of the complex institutional arrangements of the Western Range and the many interests that attempt to manage and control its delicate ecosystems. The group succeeded through an iterative process of making small but critical changes to the action situations they faced, and their experience suggests to us that by constructing spaces for respectful dialog, it may be possible for opponents to reach a common ground of shared values and goals."