Regulating the Commons: The Interplay between Information and Catch Limits with Two Types of Resources

Abstract

Empirically identifying effective resource management strategies is challenging with many concurrent regulations. We focus on two common regulations in a spatial common pool resource experiment that involves extracting two different types of resources. Pooled or individual-specific limits regulate harvest of a protected resource, which co-locates with the desirable resource. The experiment design mimics the extraction of target species and protected bycatch in commercial fisheries. We find three key results without other regulations. Desirable resource harvests are lower under pooled than individual limits; information sharing increases desirable resource harvests with individual limits, but exacerbates moral hazard under pooled limits.