Date of Award
12-1-2024
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Jacobs, Eric
Abstract
Common-pool resources play a significant role in many economies, especially in developing countries where they are a critical source of food, income, and employment for communities. Long term management of common-pool resources can be challenging because the continued existence of the resource depends upon balancing the rate of resource depletion with the rate of repletion. Effective management of these resources is vital for protecting the environment and preserving the resources for future generations as overuse and degradation can have serious impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. Elinor Ostrom’s design principles for common-pool resource (CPR) management provide valuable insight into human interaction with the environment and with one another. While it has been established that sanctions, Ostrom’s fourth design principle, increase CPR sustainability, details about the efficacy of sanctions in this context are not well understood. I investigated the impact of second- and third-party sanctions on CPR sustainability and overextraction of resources using a series of CPR games in which sanction frequency varied between groups. Results of repeated measures ANOVA showed that sanctions enhance CPR sustainability, with no difference between second- and third-party types. However, sanction type may influence overextraction, with third-party sanctions appearing to have the lowest rates. High frequency sanctions appear to be beneficial in second-party conditions. These findings stress the need to consider both sanction type and frequency for effective CPR governance and to consider their effects over time on the extraction behaviors of common-pool resource users.
Access
This thesis is Open Access and may be downloaded by anyone.