Timilsina Raja Rajendra, Kotani Koji, Kamijo Yoshio
School of Economics and Management, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi-shi, Kochi, Japan.
Research Center for Future Design, Kochi University of Technology, Kochi-shi, Kochi, Japan.
PLoS One. 2017 Feb 17;12(2):e0170981. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0170981. eCollection 2017.
Sustainability has become a key issue in managing natural resources together with growing concerns for capitalism, environmental and resource problems. We hypothesize that the ongoing modernization of competitive societies, which we refer to as "capitalism," affects human nature for utilizing common pool resources, thus compromising sustainability. To test this hypothesis, we design and implement a set of dynamic common pool resource games and experiments in the following two types of Nepalese areas: (i) rural (non-capitalistic) and (ii) urban (capitalistic) areas. We find that a proportion of prosocial individuals in urban areas is lower than that in rural areas, and urban residents deplete resources more quickly than rural residents. The composition of proself and prosocial individuals in a group and the degree of capitalism are crucial in that an increase in prosocial members in a group and the rural dummy positively affect resource sustainability by 65% and 63%, respectively. Overall, this paper shows that when societies move toward more capitalistic environments, the sustainability of common pool resources tends to decrease with the changes in individual preferences, social norms, customs and views to others through human interactions. This result implies that individuals may be losing their coordination abilities for social dilemmas of resource sustainability in capitalistic societies.
随着对资本主义、环境和资源问题的日益关注，可持续性已成为自然资源管理中的一个关键问题。我们假设，我们所说的竞争性社会的持续现代化，即“资本主义”，会影响人类利用公共资源池的本性，从而损害可持续性。为了验证这一假设，我们在尼泊尔的以下两类地区设计并实施了一系列动态公共资源池博弈和实验：（i）农村（非资本主义）地区和（ii）城市（资本主义）地区。我们发现，城市地区亲社会个体的比例低于农村地区，城市居民比农村居民更快地耗尽资源。群体中利己和亲社会个体的构成以及资本主义程度至关重要，因为群体中亲社会成员的增加和农村虚拟变量分别对资源可持续性产生65%和63%的积极影响。总体而言，本文表明，当社会向更资本主义的环境转变时，公共资源池的可持续性往往会随着个体偏好、社会规范、习俗以及通过人际互动对他人看法的变化而降低。这一结果意味着，在资本主义社会中，个体可能正在失去应对资源可持续性社会困境的协调能力。
