Communication and Local Knowledge in Common Pool Resources Experiments. Experiences from Three New Eu Member States
Abstract: The governance of common pool resources (CPR) implies establishing compatibility between ecosystems and social systems and enforcing governance institutions as essential links to maintain the capacity of socio-ecological systems. In the given context a behavioural experiment with a CPR was conducted, inspired by the innovative work of recent Nobel Prize laureate Elinor Ostrom and the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity, Arizona State University. As such an experimental study on dilemmas on the commons, following the field experiment protocol for forest game used in Colombia and Thailand, was replicated within the European Marie Curie Research Training Network “GoverNat: The experiment was further developed by the authors to address the effects of communication and conducted in three new member states that joined the EU in 2004: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia.The EU membership brought an end to a relatively long period of isolation of the three countries from (Western) European discourses due to completely different reasons but which nevertheless led to some shared characteristics. From this perspective, our study identified the process of institutional rebuild of political institutions co-existing with long-established informal institutions. Results indicates positive effect of communication and local knowledge on the formation and acceptance of informal and customised rules and sustainable use of natural resources.
