Do the Number of Appropriators from the Commons Matter in Controlled Laboratory Environments?

McMaster University, Department of Economics, Working Paper No. 2017-09

12 Pages Posted: 20 Jun 2017

See all articles by Neil Buckley

Neil Buckley

York University

Stuart Mestelman

McMaster University - Department of Economics

R. Andrew Muller

McMaster University

Stephan Schott

Carleton University

Jingjing Zhang

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University

Date Written: June 18, 2017

Abstract

Many controlled laboratory experiments have shown non-binding communication among appropriators from a common pool to be an effective way to reduce over-appropriation from the commons. The controlled laboratory environments have tended to be environments with fewer than 10 participants. Recent work by Buckley et al. (2017) found that non-binding communication is not successful in reducing appropriation effort in a controlled laboratory environment with 12 participants. A conjecture was that there might be a difference between 12 participants and 8 participants (the typical number used by Ostrom et al. 1994 in their seminal work and used in many subsequent studies by others). This paper presents an environment that utilizes the CPR setting identical to that used by Buckley et al. (2017) reduces the number of appropriators from 12 to 8. Eight sessions (4 with and 4 without non-binding communication) are run using the Buckley et al. (2017) environment with 8 participants. The results suggest that the number of participants may not be an important factor in driving the differences between the impact that non-binding communication has on the Buckley et al. (2017) and Ostrom et al. (1994) environments. Alternate conjectures are presented to account for the differences.

Keywords: controlled laboratory experiment, non-binding communication

JEL Classification: Q20, C72, C92

Suggested Citation

Buckley, Neil James and Mestelman, Stuart and Muller, R. Andrew and Schott, Stephan and Zhang, Jingjing, Do the Number of Appropriators from the Commons Matter in Controlled Laboratory Environments? (June 18, 2017). McMaster University, Department of Economics, Working Paper No. 2017-09, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2988949 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2988949

Neil James Buckley

York University ( email )

4700 Keele Street
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Canada

Stuart Mestelman (Contact Author)

McMaster University - Department of Economics ( email )

Department of Economics
Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M4
Canada

R. Andrew Muller

McMaster University ( email )

1280 Main Street West
Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4M4
Canada

Stephan Schott

Carleton University ( email )

1125 colonel By Drive
Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6
Canada

Jingjing Zhang

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University ( email )

Australia

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