An evolutionary game-theoretic approach to the strategies of community members under Joint Forest Management regime

Joint Forest Management (JFM) has been analyzed using an evolutionary-game-theoretic approach. The interactions between the different groups of a community, for forest use under state regime and JFM regime, are modeled as n-person asymmetric games, and the concepts of evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) and asymptotically stable states (ASS) are used to understand the variations in the outcomes of JFM program. The n-person game of forest use under the state regime has a unique Nash equilibrium in which the defectors or lawbreakers will continue to harvest forest resources illegally until the net returns from harvests become negative. The n-person forest resource use game under JFM regime has many Nash equilibriums, but has only one sub-game perfect defection equilibrium. However, the n-person game for JFM regime has four evolutionary strategy equilibriums: cooperators (C) equilibrium, defectors (D) equilibrium, defectors–enforcers (D–E) equilibrium and cooperators–enforcers (C–E) equilibrium, but has only two asymptotically stable (C–E and D–E) equilibriums. Implications of these results are discussed, and a need to enhance evolutionary game-theoretic formulation of JFM is highlighted.