Behavioral research/Psychology
Koomen, R., & Herrmann, E. (2018). An investigation of children’s strategies for overcoming the tragedy of the commons. Nature Human Behaviour, 2, 348–355.
Common-pool resource (CPR) dilemmas are pervasive challenges to overcome. We presented six-year-old children with an experimental CPR paradigm involving a renewable water resource, which children could collect to win individual rewards. To maximize water collection, children had to wait for water to accumulate, without collapsing the resource. We explore the social strategies children used to overcome the dilemma together. Like adults, six-year-old children were challenged by the dilemma: resource sustaining was more successful in a parallel condition in which children worked independently compared with the col- lective CPR condition.
