Balancing Resource and Strategy: Coevolution for Sustainable Common-Pool Resource Management

Common-pool resource governance requires users to cooperate and avoid overexploitation, but defection and free-riding often undermine cooperation. We model a human-environmental system that integrates dynamics of resource and users’ strategies. The resource follows a logistic function that depends on the natural growth rate, carrying capacity, and extraction rates of cooperators and defectors. The users’ strategies evolve according to different processes that capture the effects of payoff, resource, and noise. We analyze the feedback between resource availability and strategic adaptation, and explore the conditions for the emergence and maintenance of cooperation. We find that different processes lead to different regimes of equilibrium solutions and resource levels depending on the parameter configuration and initial conditions. We also show that some processes can enhance the sustainability of the resource by making the users more responsive to the resource scarcity. The paper advances the understanding of the human-environmental system and offers insights for resource governance policies and interventions.