Cooperation in the face of thresholds, risk, and uncertainty: Experimental evidence in fisher communities from Colombia

Juan C Rocha,Rocío Del Pilar Moreno,Jorge Higinio Maldonado,Lina M Saavedra-Díaz,Caroline Schill,The Anh Han

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0242363

Abstract

Cooperation is thought to be a necessary condition to solve collective action dilemmas such as climate change or the sustainable use of common pool resources. Yet, it is poorly understood how situations pervaded by thresholds shape the behaviour of people facing collective dilemmas. Here we provide empirical evidence that resource users facing thresholds maintain on average cooperative behaviours in the sense of maximising their individual earnings while ensuring future group opportunities. A framed field experiment in the form of a dynamic game with 256 Colombian fishers helped us investigate individual behavioural responses to the existence of thresholds, risk and uncertainty. Thresholds made fishers extract less fish compared to situation without thresholds, but risk had a stronger effect on reducing individual fishing effort. Contrary to previous expectations, cooperation did not break down. If cooperation can be maintained in the face of thresholds, then communicating uncertainty is more policy-relevant than estimating precisely where tipping points lay in social-ecological systems.

Highlights

Sustainability challenges are often characterised by situations pervaded by thresholds [1]
Achieving sustainable development goals such as eradicating poverty, dealing with climate change, and preventing the tragedy of the commons in using natural resources, require all cooperation to deal with situations characterised by non-linear dynamics with tipping points [2,3,4,5]
We empirically show that the negative relationship between cooperation and uncertainty does not hold for common pool resource games, played with resource users whose livelihoods largely depend on natural resources

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability challenges are often characterised by situations pervaded by thresholds [1]. Achieving sustainable development goals such as eradicating poverty, dealing with climate change, and preventing the tragedy of the commons in using natural resources, require all cooperation to deal with situations characterised by non-linear dynamics with tipping points [2,3,4,5]. Ecosystems worldwide are at risk of undergoing more frequent and severe regime shifts –abrupt transitions in their function and structure– changing the flow of ecosystem services on which societies rely upon, and the source of livelihoods for many communities [6, 7]. The code used for the analysis is publicly available at: https:// github.com/juanrocha/BEST

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