Does social information affect common pool management?

The management of a natural resource, more particularly a water resource, often refers to a problem of managing a common pool resource. In this context, Ostrom (1998) and Dietz et al. (2003) highlight the importance of disseminating information on the actions of co-users in order to facilitate its governance. However, several experiments show that, far from facilitating cooperation, the disclosure of social information can induce convergence towards average behavior which can accelerate resource predation. In this experiment, we seek to determine the effect of social information disclosure on the extraction of a common resource. We reproduce the experiment of Walker et al. (2000), and we test the effects of different levels of social information, i.e. information about co-users' actions, (aggregated, individual) and different mechanisms for sharing it (compulsory, voluntary, or based on a majority vote) (Kreitmair, 2015). To determine if and how social preferences can induce different effects of social information disclosure on extraction dynamics, we produce on the one hand a theoretical framework, and on the other hand, we analyze what the actual extraction changes are by mobilizing learning analyses as described by Huck et al. (1999) and Bigoni and Suetens (2012). When we consider group extraction, it appears that the different treatments do not improve the management of the resource. All groups result in a level of extractions close to Nash's equilibrium. The theoretical framework provides an element of explanation ; when subjects have preferences for reciprocity or compliance, social information may induce an increase of extractions. Learning models confirm this result ; the taste for conformity as well as an individualistic best response are important drivers of the extraction dynamics. Moreover, subjects with an individualistic or a competitive social orientation tend to imitate the most extractive behaviors when displayed. These findings tend to support the assumption that the dissemination of social information can aggravate the tragedy of the commons.