In most community that relies on common pool resources, such as irrigation system, the maintenance of the ecological resources requires an effective cooperation among individuals who have equal access to the common resources. This kind of coupled social-ecological system is ubiquitous in nature and requires complex interaction between social and ecological system which integrates societal and environmental dynamics. In such system, cooperative behavior should be difficult to achieve or maintain since every individual tends to maximize their own profit by overusing the common resources. Interestingly, in many cases, social cooperation is established naturally by means of internal mechanism rather than external enforcement. In this talk we will discuss our research on the formation of cooperative behavior through ostracism mechanism introduced by Tavoni. This particular mechanism requires sanction that discourages local selfish act and promotes norms that prescribe non-excessive resource extraction. Specifically, we create a simulation in which individual player makes discrete choice decision within certain network topology which constrains their social interaction and ostracism mechanism. Interestingly, simple collective behavior on social network causes complex macro phenomena such as multiple stable states, regime shifts, and hysteresis effects. In this talk we will also investigate the effect of social network and its properties (i.e. degree, topology, community structure) on the hysteresis effects and corresponding regime shifts since the intrinsic social structure may pose a threat to the sustainability of the resources for the whole communities. By lowering the degree of the social network, our simulation has found a reduction in the width of the hysteresis curve. Interestingly, further lowering of network degree leads to a change of the critical transition from a sudden cooperation breakdown to a more gradual transition. The hysteresis effect is also found stronger in scale-free network in comparison to the random network. Community structure in such network is uncovered to create additional stable states in the system. Furthermore, we have also performed analytical approximation in order to understand the origin of bifurcation in these systems. Our analysis has helped us find the cause and draw the pertinent criteria for possible future regime shifts. Moreover, our numerical and analytical investigations have provided useful insights which would guide the formulation of effective management strategies to avert any unwanted regime shifts.

Authors

Hendrik Santoso Sugiarto
Ning Ning Chung
Choi Heng Lai
Lock Yue Chew

Hot Topics in the Study of Complex Systems in Asia

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