Social Norms and Behavior in the Local Commons as Seen Through the Lens of Field Experiments

Behavior in the local commons is usually embedded within a context of incentives, regulations and social norms for the group of resource users. Standard environmental economics has tended mostly to focus on the material incentives and regulations that transform the relative material costs and benefits of various/specific/certain actions. However, there exist behavioral aspects and social norms that affect how individuals value material and non-material incentives, and thus determine their decision to either cooperate or over-extract resources from a common-pool. This paper discusses the importance of social norms in shaping behavior in the commons through the lens of experiments--in particular, experiments conducted in the field with exactly those people who usually face these social dilemmas in their daily lives. Using a large sample of experimental sessions inclusive of around one thousand people, both villagers and students, I test some hypotheses about behavior in the commons, wherein regulations and social norms constrain people's choices. The results suggest that people evaluate several components of intrinsic and material motivations in deciding whether or not to cooperate. While responding in the expected direction to an imperfectly monitored fine for over extraction, the valuation of the private net cost of violating the regulation is not a sufficient explanation for participants' changes in behavior in the experiments. Even when violations have zero cost, people may react positively to an external regulator who issues a normative statement about a rule aimed at solving a particular social dilemma.