Toward cooperation in commons dilemmas

Commons dilemmas present individuals with a choice between self and collective interest and they provide a useful paradigm for considering many environmental problems. We study them because individuals' harvest choices can be self-interested or cooperative, and too many self-interested choices literally could end the world. This paper first reviews the main theories about and influences on cooperation in the commons. Second, it suggests two new directions by (a) clarifying the nature of cooperation both conceptually and mathematically, and (b) outlining a new theoretical perspective. Measures of cooperation must include four elements: the number of harvesters, the amount bf the resource, the rate of resource regeneration, and the size of harvests. Our theoretical suggestion is to place greater emphasis on the rise and fall of various influences on harvester behaviour over the course of a commons dilemma, an emphasis we call the sequential-influence approach.