Conditional cooperation, context and why strong rules work - A Namibian common-pool resource experiment

- Experiment analysis based on Namibian field data of 200 participants
- Decision factors like rules, others' past action, and context are analyzed.
- Introduction of rules reveals a contrarian effect of past action-based judgment.
- Factors of community cohesion matter even in the presence of rules.
- Experimental context matters in the field due to established behavior.

Common-pool resource experiments in the field have not yet fully explored cooperative decision-making in its dependence on established past behavior, explicit rules and environmental context. The purpose of this paper is to analyze these factors and their single as well as combined influence on cooperative behavior. The results show that rule enforcement changes the influence of past action as a determinant of cooperation: Past action retains relevance for decision-making but reveals a partly contrarian influence as long as rules are strong. Further, the introduction of explicit rules does not change the influence of personal relationships among participants, but renders the influence of leadership insignificant. Furthermore, the experiments show that context plays a decisive role, which suggests the possibility of tailoring experiments to specific uses: If the context-specific behavior of locals is relevant to policy decisions, then experiments can help capture these effects.