University of Michigan, 2007, Principal Investigator (PI) Arun Agrawal

In this project we address common pool resource management questions related to land use and land cover change. The project attempts to answer how user behavior and resource-related outcomes change as users place greater emphasis on externally imposed institutions that rely on one way flow of information about resource condition relative to spontaneously generated institutions that permit a two-way flow of information about forest conditions. The project is ongoing and currently I am co-writing a paper that investigates how changes in the relative dependence of users on different institutions affect user behavior, harvesting levels, and forest-related outcomes. We investigate these institutional influences using an agent-based model that is informed by the results of a survey of 2200 users in the Indian Himalaya.

The paper is planned for submission this year or early 2008 and the project is funded by an NSF Human and Social Dynamics (BCS-0527318) grant.