• Media type: Electronic Conference Proceeding
  • Title: Renewable Resource Use with Imperfect Self-Control
  • Contributor: Werner, Katharina [Author]; Strulik, Holger [Author]
  • imprint: Kiel, Hamburg: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, 2020
  • Language: English
  • Keywords: common pool resource management ; temptation ; Q20 ; sustainability ; self-control ; renewable resource use
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  • Description: We investigate renewable resources when the harvesting agents face self-control problems. Individuals are conceptualized as dual selves. The rational long-run self plans for the infinite future while the affective short-run self desires to maximize instantaneous profits. Depending on the degree of self-control, actual behavior is partly driven by short-run desires. This modeling represents impatience and present bias without causing time inconsistent decision making. In a model of a single harvesting agent (e.g. a fishery), we discuss how self-control problems affect harvesting behavior, resource conservation, and sustainability and discuss policies to curb overuse and potential collapse of the resource due to present-biased harvesting behavior. We then extend the model to several harvesting agents and show how limited self-control exacerbates the common pool problem. Finally, we investigate heterogenous agents and show that there are spillover effects of limited self-control in the sense that perfectly rational agents also behave less conservatively when they interact with agents afflicted by imperfect self-control.
  • Access State: Open Access