A classroom experimental game to improve the understanding of asymmetric common-pool resource dilemmas in irrigation water management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iree.2020.100199Get rights and content

Highlights

  • A classroom experimental game that deals with the economics of asymmetric common-pool resources (CPR).

  • Multiple concepts about CPR management can be analysed simultaneously through the classroom experimental game.

  • A face-to-face experimental game that is helpful in teaching graduate student courses on CPR management.

  • A hand-run experimental game that combines a ludic learning approach with the rigorous testing of hypotheses.

Abstract

We describe a classroom experimental game focusing on some key economic concepts surrounding water management. The game shows the case of an asymmetric common-pool resource: an irrigation system where players represent irrigating farmers. Dilemmas between individual and collective interests arise, and asymmetry of access to the resource renders it more difficult to reach a cooperative equilibrium. The game is used to test hypotheses about the influence of communication and of water availability on players’ cooperation, hence on the group’s ability to reach equilibrium. The game was used in multiple postgraduate teaching contexts. We show the example of a session played in Tunisia, where communication had a strong and positive impact on cooperation, and compare the results of that session with those of another played in South Africa, where different outcomes emerged from the game. We then discuss the advantages and the limitations of such an experimental game for teaching purposes.

Introduction

Classroom experiments are increasingly being used as teaching devices in economics, as experiments facilitate the involvement of students and their understanding of important, sometimes abstract, concepts.

Classroom experiments on an economics course are considered to improve student learning (Frank, 1997; Dickie, 2006) and increase student motivation for the subject (Gremmen and van den Brekel, 2013). Cartwright and Stepanova. (2012) highlighted the importance of integrating classroom experiments with some form of assessment or homework, while Egbert and Mertins (2008) found that involving students in the design of the experiments and asking them to conduct experiments themselves promoted genuine active learning by engaging the students, both individually and collectively.

Such experiments have been used to explain a wide range of issues in economics, such as the effects of various instruments in pollution regulation (Corrigan, 2011), and the role of opportunity costs in production decisions (Holt et al., 2010), or to discuss more general concepts, such as fairness (Dickinson, 2002), or social responsibility (Rodrigo-Gonzalez and Caballer-Tarazona, 2015).

Some early experiments were set up to discuss the management of common-pool resources (CPR) (Ostrom, 1990) and teach the so-called ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, 1968). Hazlett (1997) used a simple hand-run class experiment to show the social dilemmas arising from the opposition of individual and collective interests in CPR management, and suggested two possible solutions: communication and individual property. Access to the resource (represented by M&Ms) was symmetric and the game was designed for college students in economics. Murphy and Cardenas. (2004) designed a hand-run classroom experiment about common-pool resource management. The experiment was used to illustrate concepts such as Pareto efficiency and Nash equilibrium, and was run with students at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Seibert and Vis (2012) proposed a web-based experimental computer game representing water conflicts among farmers in a simplified way. The particular aim of the game was to teach several game-theoretical situations typical of water-related conflicts. Zetland (2017) designed a full course on CPR management, where students took part in an experience between a natural and a framed field experiment.

These experimental games cover multiple aspects of CPR management. However, they never consider the frequent upstream-downstream asymmetry of users’ access to a CPR, which is particularly true in water management contexts. In those circumstances, users situated upstream have privileged access to the resource and the downstream users need some kind of bargaining power to cope with the situation (Bhaduri et al., 2011): there must either be some common interest with the upstream users, or the possibility of sanctioning the strategic behaviour of the upstream players (Janssen et al., 2011a). Head-ender players are in a situation of ‘stationary bandits’ (Olson, 1965), like a ruler managing asymmetric power relationships. However, when the system does not provide head-enders with a sufficient resource to maximize their payoffs and the contribution of tail-enders is needed to improve common resource availability, tail-enders earn negotiating power. This happens, for instance, in the event of drought, when surface water becomes scarce and common investments are required to find substitute resources.

To fill this gap, we propose a classroom experimental game about asymmetric CPR management. The game is framed as an irrigation system and sheds light on several concepts emerging from the wide literature on CPR management. The following aspects are particularly addressed:

  • 1)

    The social dilemmas that arise in such situations (Clark, 1990; Ferrand et al., 2009)

  • 2)

    The interdependency between upstream/head-ender and downstream/tail-ender players (Anderies et al., 2013; Erdlenbruch et al., 2008; Bhaduri et al., 2011)

  • 3)

    The regime shifts due to droughts (Anderies et al., 2013; Brozovic and Schlenker, 2011; De Frutos Cachorro et al., 2019; Lindahl et al., 2016; Schill et al., 2015; Tsur and Zemel, 2014)

  • 4)

    The possibility of investing in infrastructure to enhance the availability of the resource (Andreoni et al., 2003).

Our classroom experiment was inspired by an experimental game from Janssen et al. (2011a; and 2011b) and Anderies et al. (2013). As in the model used by Janssen et al. (2011a; and 2011b), players representing farmers are confronted with an asymmetric social dilemma and must choose the level of their investment in the public good (groundwater from a borehole), which will then be shared as a common resource (irrigation water).

The main contribution of this article consists in adapting the earlier experiment by Janssen et al. (2011a; and 2011b) into an easy-to-use and easy-to-understand experimental classroom game that enables teachers to transmit, and students to reflect upon, different issues arising from asymmetric CPR management.

We made several changes to the Janssen et al. model (2011a and 2011b), which made our experimental game original and suitable for a teaching context. We converted the computer interface into a physical board game, playable with students sitting around a table. In order to make the game playable in a face-to-face context and allow discussions among students, we introduced a set of activity cards that players can choose to extract water from the system and irrigate their plots. These cards, based on a production function with precise relations between inputs (water and money) and outputs, enable ludic exchanges among players and an explicit interaction that simulates the real exchanges occurring among farmers in an irrigation system. Furthermore, as the game allows free communication among players, we can easily explore the role of communication in CPR management (Ostrom, 1990). Lastly, as we focus on the possible occurrence of drought in the system, we introduced the possibility of changing the amount of the resource available to players.

As in previous classroom experiments on CPR management (Hazlett, 1997; Murphy and Cardenas., 2004; Seibert and Vis, 2012), we take advantage of the game theoretical environment to illustrate the concepts of strategic interaction: Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimum, often used in resource economics. However, in addition to that, we also take into account the asymmetric nature of the problem and the subsequent importance of the interdependency existing between players in reaching equilibria.

In short, our classroom experimental game addresses a CPR management problem as an interdependent system prone to resource scarcity, where asymmetric access to the resource provokes relations of power and compromises between head- and tail-ender users.

The originality of our game lies in the variety of issues about asymmetric CPR that can be taught based on a single game session that it easy to set up and play.

While early classroom experimental games were often hand-run, with the gradually widespread availability of information technology, computerized experiments have also become widely available over the last fifteen years (Ball and Eckel., 2004). Computerized experiments have a dual advantage. They make it possible to run experiments with, and collect data on, wider groups of students. Moreover, students can take part in the experiments from any location they wish. Janssen et al. (2010) carried out a review of available experimental platforms, such as oTree (Chen et al., 2016) and Ztree (Fischbacher, 2007), for behavioural experiments on social-ecological systems.

Carter and Emerson (2012) found no significant difference in student achievement or other outcomes between students exposed to experiments in class and students exposed to them online. However, the authors did find that students exposed to hand-run experiments reported more favourable views of the experimental pedagogy and higher levels of interaction with their classmates.

Our game has mainly hand-run features, as we believe in the pedagogical advantages of these tools (Carter and Emerson, 2012). In particular, in-class experiments that are run manually allow for considerably more face-to-face interaction among students and often involve physical activity. They are easy for teachers to set up and can be used in many places and with a variable number of players.

Despite the physical nature of our game, a computer interface is available for the game manager, to facilitate and speed up its implementation, make data collection easier, and also with a view to a possible future replication device (So, 2020). It complements the physical game platform and contains the model underpinning the game. The computer interface allows easy input of players’ choices and calculates the game’s outputs. More recently, a complete computerized version of our game was developed for laboratory experiments (Bonté et al., 2019). In this article, we present the board game that we use for teaching purposes.

We targeted graduate students in economics and natural resource economics, particularly at the MSc and PhD levels. However, the game can be adapted to other audiences. A first version of this CPR game was used in southern Africa (Farolfi et al., 2013) and subsequent versions were employed in France and Tunisia. In 2019, a simplified version was used to run 10-minute sessions with small groups from the very diversified and large public visiting the International Agricultural Fair in Paris.

In the following sections, we first describe the experimental game used for post-graduate courses in economics, then illustrate the results of a session run at INAT Tunis and compare them with the results of another session run at the University of Pretoria, and finally we discuss the advantages and limitations of this teaching device, providing leads for further developments. The appendices contain a description of the materials needed to play the game and the instructions for the game manager (Appendix A), the instructions for the players (Appendix B), and a workout example (questions) that can be used during classes following the game (Appendix C).

Section snippets

The game

The game is a hand-run experimental device intended for graduate students. A class of 20–30 students composes the standard audience, and the instructor is the game manager (cf. complete instructions for the game manager in Appendix A, where a list of the materials needed to play the game and the links to the repository where the materials are downloadable are also provided). We usually play the game with two groups of about 15 players. The game manager first prepares the session for 10−15 min.

Results

We now present the results of one of our sessions, to illustrate the type of outcome produced in a classroom experimental game to be discussed with the students who played it. A comparison between this session and another one is also shown to illustrate the possible differences emerging from different groups of students. Table 3 contains the basic statistics for the two sessions presented.

During a session run at the National Institute of Agronomy in Tunis (INAT) in November 2018, 22 students

Discussion and conclusion

Common-pool resources (CPR) have the particularity of placing individual and collective interests in apparent opposition and creating tension in the choice of action, which is commonly referred to as a social dilemma. Given the high frequency with which these dilemmas occur in real life, it is important for graduate students in natural resource and environmental economics to be presented with tools and devices that facilitate their understanding of this problem and enable solutions to be

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Stefano Farolfi: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Supervision, Writing - original draft. Katrin Erdlenbruch: Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors report no declarations of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions, which have improved the quality of the manuscript.

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