We examine individual harvesters’ preferences for government enforcement of a quota imposed on the exploitation of a common pool resource. We develop a model of Nash behavior by identical risk neutral harvesters to explain individual equilibrium preferences for enforcement of an efficient...

This article uses experimental data to test for a complementary relationship between formal regulations imposed on a community to conserve a local natural resource and non-binding verbal agreements to do the same. Our experiments were conducted in the field in three regions of Colombia. Our...

This paper presents the results from a series of framed field experiments conducted in fishing communities off the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The goal is to investigate the relative effectiveness of exogenous regulatory pressure and pro-social emotions in promoting cooperative behavior in a...

Managing local environmental resources with moderately enforced government regulations can often be counterproductive, whereas nonbinding communications can be remarkably effective. The authors describe a classroom experiment that illustrates these points. The experiment is rich in its...

With data from framed common pool resource experiments conducted with artisanal fishing communities in Colombia, we estimate a hierarchical linear model to investigate within-group and between-group variation in individual harvest strategies across several institutions. Our results suggest that...

This paper uses experimental data to test for a complementary relationship between formal regulations imposed on a community to conserve a local natural resource and nonbinding verbal agreements to do the same. Our experiments were conducted in the field in three regions of Colombia. Each group...