The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use

Rajiv Sethi · E. Somanathan

566 citations0/0 files storedAmerican Economic Review

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Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation Economic Theory and Institutions Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies

Abstract

The problem of extracting commonly owned renewable resources is examined within an evolutionary-game-theoretic framework. It is shown that cooperative behavior guided by norms of restraint and punishment may be stable in a well-defined sense against invasion by narrowly self-interested behavior. The resource-stock dynamics are integrated with the evolutionary-game dynamics. Effects of changes in prices, technology, and social cohesion on extraction behavior and the long-run stock are analyzed. When threshold values of the parameters are crossed, social norms can break down leading generally to the lowering of the long-run stock and possibly to its extinction. Copyright 1996 by American Economic Association.

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References

1992Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action 1994Making Democracy Work 1978Evolutionary stable strategies and game dynamics 1993The Evolution of Conventions 1986The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information 1986An Evolutionary Approach to Norms 1992Covenants with and without a Sword: Self-Governance Is Possible 1993Learning, Mutation, and Long Run Equilibria in Games

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2014Collective action and the evolution of social norms 2005Economics of Social Capital*2020Evolutionary games with environmental feedbacks 2007Private and Common Property Rights 2012Evolving cooperation 2018Evolutionary Game Theory: A Renaissance 2013A bottom-up institutional approach to cooperative governance of risky commons

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