Inequality and sustaining cooperation in common lands and the laboratory

In analysing the theoretical puzzle of collective action and cooperation in social dilemmas, one is bound to run into the free-rider problem: when a number of profit-maximising people are interested in the same outcome, rational individuals will attempt to free-ride at the expense of others' efforts, resulting eventually in failure to produce the collective good. Elinor Ostrom (1990) studied the emergence of sustainable cooperation in the context of historical common lands: common pool resources - like oil fields, grasslands or fishing grounds - owned by no-one in particular and used by many. Appropriators in a common land are under a variety of pressures such as crop failures, family
conflicts and rough weather conditions, which may impact some more than others (McGuire & Netting, 1982). The effects of inequality on cooperation is up until now underexplored, and the existing evidence is inconclusive. While field-based and some experiment-based evidence suggests negative effects of inequality on cooperation (Hackett, Schlager &Walker 1994), other research reports no effect or even positive effects (Dayton-Johnson & Bardhan, 2002; Ruttan, 2006; Reuben & Riedl, 2013). This discrepancy in evidence makes this an area in which much new information can still be gained. The degree of inequality in a common land society may have great impact on the success to maintain
cooperation in collective action settings. Chapters in the proposed research will address key questions regarding the effect of inequality on appropriation behaviour in common lands: does inequality have a negative effect on long-term cooperation in common lands? Are differences in the degree of inequality related to biophysical and/or contextual aspects of common lands? Or does the same degree of inequality affect different commons to a different extent? Next to these questions, we could subsequently investigate what factors of common lands influence inequality measures.
We could expect that a larger degree of inequality will result in a lower efficiency of appropriation of the resource, which could even lead to Hardin's (1968) predicted tragedy of the commons. For example, with a larger degree of inequality between authorities and local appropriators we could expect institutions in commons to be less tailored to the characteristics and needs of the specific common. Consequently, appropriation of the common will not be optimal due to inadequate regulations caused by top-down governance of the common and the common resource will likely fall into decay. Next to this, we could expect some common pool resources to be more affected by this inequality than others; irrigation systems for instance, which need clear regulation on the use of the resource due to unequal positioning of appropriators relative to the resource, are likely to be affected by ill-fitted institutions.
To test these hypotheses, the proposed research will contain chapters using contextualised laboratory experiments and chapters using detailed common land datasets. To connect the laboratory setting to common lands, we use a method of decreased abstraction, integrating elements of the social structure within a common in the experiments, using so-called Common Pool Resource [CPR] games. Using CPR games in laboratory experiments will enable us to investigate the effects of inequality on cooperative behaviour under different conditions in common land settings. Adding to this, we will make use of existing datasets, which will enable us to examine both the effects of inequality on cooperative behaviour and the moderating effects of underlying factors, inherent to the specific commons, on these inequality effects.