The Nature of Common-Pool Resource Problems

Published as:"The Nature of Common-Pool Resource Problems," Rationality and Society 2(3), July 1990, 335-358."A large, multidisciplinary literature focuses on the problems occurring when multiple individuals concurrently use common-pool resources such as fisheries, grazing areas, airsheds, oil pools, and irrigation systems. Some scholars presume that all such problems share a single underlying theoretical structure -- that of an iterated, Prisoner's Dilemma game or of a collective action problem. Others have used more specific models, such as those of rent dissipation and technical externalities, to analyze these problems. On the other hand, many descriptions of the problems faced by individuals using common-pool resources do not rely on any theoretical structure to organize empirical research or test hypotheses. It is possible to learn from these descriptions about a wide variety of institutional arrangements that the users of common-pool resources have devised to change incentives and avoid the predicted theoretical outcomes. The institutional arrangements used to enable multiple users to manage common-pool resources are so diverse, however, that it is hard to imagine that they are all directed at helping individuals solve exactly the same set of problems."