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Governing the Commons

  1. Module Overview and Objectives

    This 25-minute module assumes students have not been introduced to the ”tragedy of the commons“. The primary learning objective is to have students experience each individual’s incentive to over-consume a shared resource. The instructor has the option of adding an additional game (9 minutes) to show how communication may improve outcomes.

    This module is built for classes below 100 students. For classes of 100 students or more, we recommend increasing the group size to 10.

  2. The Module: A Brief Summary

    The game starts with each group's fish stock at the lake's capacity: 40 fish for each student. Each round, students simultaneously choose how many fish to catch. At the end of each round, the fish double, up to a maximum of lake capacity. At the end of the game, the doubled fish stock is evenly divided amongst the group. As a result, the group catching half of the stock in every round maximizes total fish caught.

    To help students this, each student is her own group in Game 1. In Game 2, each group contains four students, likely resulting in over-fishing. In optional Game 3, the introduction of communication often helps alleviate the tragedy.

    Module Procedures in Brief

    Optional

  3. Detailed Procedures

    Optional