Solving humanity's social-environmental challenges calls for co-operation by the relevant actors. Hence, involving them in the policy process has been deemed both necessary and promising. But how and to what extent can participatory policy interventions effectively foster co-operation for...

Natural resource management often involves social dilemmas. Institutional and behavioural economics have shown that other-regarding preferences and pro-social behaviour can help overcome such dilemmas. Interventions that induce resource users to consider a perspective broader than their own may...

Unresolved social dilemmas that inhibit pro-social behaviour are at the root of most pressing global environmental issues such as climate change, ecological degradation and water scarcity. Meeting these challenges through purely externally imposed (‘top-down’) solutions can be ineffective or...

We perform a model analysis to study the origins of limited resilience in ecological-economic systems. We demonstrate that the resilience properties of the ecosystem are essentially determined by the management institutions and consumers' preferences for ecosystem services. In particular, we...

Many environmental problems represent social dilemma situations where individually rational behaviour leads to collectively suboptimal outcomes. Communication has been found to alleviate the dilemma and stimulate cooperation in these situations. Yet, the knowledge of what type of information...

Deforestation in Bolivia has increased considerably during the last few decades, which causes carbon dioxide emissions, biodiversity loss, changes to the hydrologic cycle, among others. This study pretends to estimate the impacts and costs of that deforestation. Since each variablehas its own...

Participatory programs can reduce the informational and power asymmetries that engender mistrust. These programs, however, cannot include every citizen. Hence, it is important to evaluate if providing information about those programs could affect trust among those who do not participate. We...

Last summer visitors to the Oslo opera house were met with the following announcement: "Here comes the "Opera Commons" explaining: "Operaallmenningen", the Opera Commons, "will be a multi-functional meeting place for cultural events, recreational activities and people passing through." The...

Agents interacting on a body of water choose between technologies to catch fish. One is harmless to the resource, as it allows full recovery; the other yields high immediate catches, but low(er) future catches. Strategic interaction in one objective resource game may induce subjective games in...

This paper presents an experimental study that compares the ability of human groups to escape the tragedy of the commons through institutional change or communication. Teams of five players are placed in a dynamic CPR environment with inefficient institutional settings. The results clearly show...