Sustainable Use of Common-Pool Resources Through Deliberation

A common-pool resource is a natural or a human-made subtractable resource, such as an irrigation system, a fresh water resource, or fishery. While there are many studies examining how to use these resources sustainably, in practice it is often costly and difficult to avoid over-usage (especially when the resource is subject to sequential or asymmetric usage by different actors). How can we protect common-pool resources for future generations who will necessarily bear the brunt of our actions today? Previous work has suggested that formal as well as information institutions can help. More recent work has shown that the possibility to communicate before subtraction increases sustainable use of a resource. We advance this literature by studying whether the possibility of deliberation prevents the overuse of an asymmetric common-pool resource. We conducted an anonymized and computerized laboratory experiment where participants engage in an asymmetric common pool resource game. Each participant made two decisions per round: How much to invest in a common resource and how much to withdraw from the resource. We assigned participants into three experimental treatments: a baseline (no interaction between participants), a communication group (unstructured communication possible), and a deliberation group (priming for deliberative rules on justification, understanding, and the absence of threats). Our preliminary results suggest that the possibility to communicate or deliberate promotes a sustainable resource use, and that deliberation does so even more than mere communication.