The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC 3010, Australia.
Sci Rep. 2017 May 23;7(1):2307. doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-02151-y.
The sustainable use of common pool resources has become a significant global challenge. It is now widely accepted that specific mechanisms such as community-based management strategies, institutional responses such as resource privatization, information availability and emergent social norms can be used to constrain individual 'harvesting' to socially optimal levels. However, there is a paucity of research focused specifically on aligning profitability and sustainability goals. In this paper, an integrated mathematical model of a common pool resource game is developed to explore the nexus between the underlying costs and benefits of harvesting decisions and the sustainable level of a shared, dynamic resource. We derive optimal harvesting efforts analytically and then use numerical simulations to show that individuals in a group can learn to make harvesting decisions that lead to the globally optimal levels. Individual agents make their decision based on signals received and a trade-off between economic and ecological sustainability. When the balance is weighted towards profitability, acceptable economic and social outcomes emerge. However, if individual agents are solely driven by profit, the shared resource is depleted in the long run - sustainability is possible despite some greed, but too much will lead to over-exploitation.
公共池塘资源的可持续利用已成为一个重大的全球性挑战。人们普遍认为，可以采用基于社区的管理策略等特定机制、资源私有化等制度对策、信息的可获得性以及新兴社会规范来约束个人的“收获”行为，使之达到社会最优水平。然而，专门针对协调盈利能力和可持续性目标的研究还很少。本文建立了一个公共池塘资源博弈的综合数学模型，以探讨收获决策的潜在成本和收益与共享动态资源的可持续水平之间的关系。我们通过解析推导出了最优的收获努力程度，然后通过数值模拟表明，群体中的个体可以学会做出导致全球最优水平的收获决策。个体决策者根据收到的信号做出决策，并在经济和生态可持续性之间进行权衡。当平衡倾向于盈利能力时，就会出现可接受的经济和社会结果。但是，如果个体决策者仅仅受利润驱动，那么共享资源将在长期内被耗尽——尽管存在一些贪婪，但仍有可能实现可持续性，而过度贪婪则会导致过度开发。
