Avoiding catastrophic collapse in small-scale fisheries through inefficient cooperation: evidence from a framed field experiment

摘要

Small-scale fisheries (SSFs) are significant for poverty alleviation, but are threatened by overexploitationand climate change effects such as drastic drops in regrowth rates. How willfishers adapt? To shed light on this, we ran a common-pool resource experiment with SSFfishers in Thailand. Our results show that groups confronted with a potential abrupt dropin the regrowth rate are more likely to form cooperative agreements compared to groupsnot confronted with such a drop, which theory cannot predict. However, groups that formcooperative agreements do not necessarily manage the resource efficiently; many groupsunder-exploit. Over-exploitation is driven by individual characteristics, e.g., if individualscan diversify income, and if they are born outside the village. We conclude that more systematicexploration of the role of socio-economic factors, and how these factors interactwith ecological conditions facing fishers, are needed. Our work can be seen as one step inthis direction.