We investigate the behavioural responses of resource users to two policy interventions: sanctioned quotas and information provisioning. We do so in a context in which multiple resources (pastures and wild animal stocks) are connected and could substantially and drastically deteriorate as a result of management. We perform an experimental study among communities that are managing common pool wildlife in Zimbabwe.

This work presents the results of framed field experiments designed to study the joint problem of managing harvests from a common pool resource and protecting the resource from poaching. The experiments were conducted both in the field with TURF users and in the lab with university students. Our study has two objectives. First, we designed our experiments to study the effects of poaching on the ability of common pool resource users to coordinate their harvests when encroachment by outsiders is unrestricted and when the government provides weak enforcement.

Institutions play a significant role in stabilising large-scale cooperation
in common pool resource management. Without restrictions to govern human
behaviour, most natural resources are vulnerable to overexploitation. This study
used a sample size of 336 households and community-level data from 30 communities
around Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe, to analyse the relationship
between institutions and biodiversity outcomes in community-based wildlife
conservation. Our results suggest a much stronger effect of institutions on biodiversity

Abstract: Human-induced causes of forest change occur at multiple scales. Yet, most governance mechanisms are designed at a single level – whether international, national, regional or local – and do not provide effective solutions for the overarching challenge of forest governance.

States have treaty-based and customary international law-based responsibilities to ensure that greenhouse gas emissions emanating from their territory do not cause transboundary harm. However, those international legal responsibilities conflict with the observed behavior of states, which suggests a general rule of irresponsible treatment of the global commons.

A revised application of Ostrom's (Ostrom, 2007) Social-Ecological System (SES) framework to Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, G. (1968), Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248) demonstrates that its institutional structure is more complex than either Hardin or Ostrom had imagined.

We examine the effect of the introduction of uniform water-charging for aquifer management and provide evidence using a survey-based choice experiment of agricultural water users in rural Tunisia. Theoretically, we show that the implementation of the proposed second-best regulation would result both in efficiency gains and in distributional effects in favour of small landholders. Empirically, we find that resistance to the introduction of an effective water-charging regime is greatest amongst the largest landholders.

That wealthier developing country households may rely more heavily on child labor than poorer households has come to be known as the “wealth paradox.” This paper tests for a wealth paradox with regard to common natural resource wealth by analyzing the relationship between child labor and improved common property forest management (CPFM) in Bolivia.

The effect of social capital on the economic performance of artisanal  fishermen organizations that work under a Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURF) system was tested using the social networks approach. The application was based on a sample of artisanal fishers organizations that extract the locally named “loco” (Concholepas concholepas) in Central-Southern Chile. Social networks were measured through organizations’ structural properties and their bonding, linking, and bridging relationships. Economic performance was measured through per capita income.

We study through framed field economic experiment the effects of exogenous changes in abundance levels of a renewable natural resource on compliance individual decisions of users operating under a common property regime and a system of Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURF) considering extraction quotas and external enforcement to detect and sanctions violations.