Effects of Space in a Dynamic Common-Pool Resource Experiment

In the experimental field, many facets of the interaction between humans and resources have been studied through relatively simple common-pool resource games. They lack, therefore, some potentially relevant characteristics of the world they aim to represent. Introducing more complex, real-time experiments, including a spatial distribution of the participants and the resources, is a way of bridging this gap. But how far are the results comparable? And in how far is the behavior of the experimental subjects influenced by the mere introduction of a spatial representation of the resource? We revisited the Virtual Commons’ Foraging experiment developed by Janssen (2010), and compared the behavior observed in a spatially distributed resource with the one emerging in absence of a spatial distribution, in order to identify differences caused by the different representation of the resource. Our results show that the introduction of a two-dimensional experimental space lowers cooperation levels.