Stylized solutions for environmental dilemmas in a cellular world

I use a simple model of social dilemmas arising from environmental problems to study the effects of certain stylized solution strategies. It is often a central characteristic of these environmental dilemmas that action effects are spatially concentrated, i.e. the strength of side effects of individual actions declines with the distance to the source of pollution. I use computer simulations based on a cellular automata framework, to model this spatial embeddedness of environmental dilemmas. The model assumes a world that is populated by individuals following simple behavioral heuristics based on reciprocity. Simulations focus on the analysis of three intervention strategies that a benevolent social planner may apply to promote pro-social behavior, the initiation of spontaneous randomly distributed cooperative behavior, the creation of cooperative clusters and, finally, the manipulation of actors’ problem attention. The analysis shows that the spatial concentration of side effects is a central condition for the effectiveness of interventions. The stronger the spatial concentration of action effects, the easier it is to attain universal cooperation. Moreover, intervention strategies in an initially uncooperative world tend be more successful if they create small clusters of cooperative behavior, rather than to spread initial cooperators randomly. Finally, the chances for cooperative clusters to survive and spread may be considerably improved by the manipulation of actors’ problem attention. More technically, it may foster cooperation, when uncooperative actors more often employ their decision heuristic to reconsider their behavior than cooperative actors do.