Rule compliance in public forests; A pilot experiment
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2020-07-09
Language
en
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Abstract
Illegal logging is a serious issue that not only has dire environmental and social consequences,
but also bring forwards the issue of poor governance of common pool resources. The purpose
of this thesis is to contribute to understanding the causes of illegal logging. I integrated existing
findings into one theoretical framework for rule compliance onto which I base my knowledge
contribution. Further, by building a system dynamics model on aggregate forest and
policymaking dynamics, I ran simulations calibrated on historical data. Model simulations
showed general fit-to-behavior with discrepancies for the logging function, pointing to the need
to study how logging decisions are made. Because of this I designed a multiplayer online
simulation game whose rules include an incentive, monitoring and sanctioning mechanism tied
together in a scoring function. The participants in the pilot experiment played the game and
then reflected about their experience in an interview. Through cross-referencing participant
performance and their expressed rationale, I was able to derive initial insights on reasoning
behind compliance with the allowable annual cut. Results showed that participants differed in
motivation (competitive or noncompetitive) and strategy (compliant and noncompliant).
Overall, participants with a compliant strategy expressed more reasons justifying their behavior
compared to noncompliant participants. Illegal gain was most often used as a justification for
noncompliant behavior, pointing to the incentive structure as a leverage point. Receiving news
that another player has been sanctioned reinforced the participants original strategy, which
highlights the role of social norms. These initial insights broaden scholarly understanding of
compliance and set the stage for running a full-scale experiment. This thesis also has a
methodological contribution as it outlines the process of developing a simulation game based
off a system dynamics model for the specific purpose of research. Moreover, it proves the
usefulness of pilot experiments for studying decision-making reasoning
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen