How Members of a Common Deal with Inspection and Overcrop

Abstract

"An usual common consists of a common property resource and members interacting and managing the resource. The dynamics of the resource depends on its natural growth and the concrete acts of appropriation by the members. It is well known that in the standard case the resource is endangered to be overexploited if the members of the common behave but selfinterested. Nevertheless both experiments and field research prove that members may succeed in stabilising the common by cooperating sufficiently. Different institutional means are used for the stabilisation task. In our experiments and analyses we focus at use limitations combined with inspection. We observed a very poor performance of the institution and stable oscillation patterns. An attempt is made to explain what cognitions and social-cognitions may have shaped the observed behavioral patterns."