Abstract for: Humanitarian Organizations and Common-Pool Resources: An Empirical Analysis

One of the most difficult and critical challenges in humanitarian operations is to manage resources, monetary or not. We hypothesize that the competition for resources by humanitarian organizations is an example of common-pool resources (CPR) and that it can be influenced by providing actors with information on system dynamics elements that can help explain important structural aspects of the CPR problem. Besides running games with and without communication for the base case, we tested another four information treatments with communication: with bathtub explanation, with bathtub explanation plus context example, with reinforcing explanation, with all the former. Preliminary results confirm the CPR setting and the effect of communication. We hope the experiments shed light on the causal mechanism that help participants better allocate resources. This information allows decision-makers to better manage CPR problems as high leverage policies are identified.