Abstract
Recently, there has been an increased interest in using behavioral experiments to study hypotheses on the governance of social-ecological systems. A diversity of software tools are used to implement such experiments. We evaluated various publicly available platforms that could be used in research and education on the governance of social-ecological systems. The aims of the various platforms are distinct, and this is noticeable in the differences in their user-friendliness and their adaptability to novel research questions. The more easily accessible platforms are useful for prototyping experiments and for educational purposes to illustrate theoretical concepts. To advance novel research aims, more elaborate programming experience is required to either implement an experiment from scratch or adjust existing experimental software. There is no ideal platform best suited for all possible use cases, but we have provided a menu of options and their associated trade-offs.
Highlights
The quest for sustainability is fraught with social dilemmas regarding the use of shared resources
We evaluated various publicly available platforms that could be used in research and education on the governance of social-ecological systems
We focus on laboratory experiments, software systems that are used for laboratory experiments can be the starting point for field experiments, and the two domains have increasingly similar technical needs
Summary
The quest for sustainability is fraught with social dilemmas regarding the use of shared resources. One limitation of early public goods and common pool resource experiments for the use of studying governance of socialecological systems was the lack of relevant ecological complexity. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACHES TO GOVERNANCE OF SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS We discuss some common variations of standard experiments This will provide a perspective on the scope of possible experiments and the justification for certain choices of platforms. Experiments reported in other papers in this special issue on behavioral experiments for social-ecological systems are variations of the public good and common pool resources. Open online experiments for social-ecological systems research promise to increase participation and cultural and ethnic diversity in experimental results, but they come with significant challenges associated with identity and behavioral verification and validation. Calculations by experimenters can be done more efficiently with spreadsheets, data and forms must be processed manually, which introduces the
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