Coordination and cooperation in asymmetric commons dilemmas: A replication study

Abstract

Janssen et al. (2011, Experimental Economics, Vol. 14, pp. 547–566) studied an asymmetric, finitely repeated common-pool resource dilemma with free-form communication in which subjects made decisions about investments in an infrastructure, and about extraction from a resource made available by this infrastructure. They found that infrastructure provision and joint payoffs converged to high levels because structurally advantaged “front-enders” tend to behave fairly by restricting themselves voluntarily at the extraction stage, and structurally disadvantaged “tail-enders” reciprocate by investing. This paper reports a fully independent, pre-registered, double-blind replication attempt conducted in a different lab, that also supplies elevated statistical power and adheres to the highest principles of scientific transparency and openness. It is found that the key results of Janssen et al. not only re-appear qualitatively but are quantitatively and statistically strengthened. The conclusions drawn from the results are therefore robust, and the basic design can be confidently used for follow-up research.

Keywords: common-pool resources, asymmetry, irrigation, fairness, real-time experiment

JEL Classification: C91, C92, Q25, Q57