Back to the future: An experiment on ecological restoration

Abstract

The urgency of climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises has prompted international and national institutions to move beyond the prevention and mitigation of damages and to design policies aimed at promoting ecological restoration. In this paper, we address this emerging policy challenge by presenting experimental evidence on individuals’ propensity to contribute to restoration activities. Specifically, our design links a common pool resource game to a public good game to investigate how previous resource exploitation influences restoration decisions. We find that history matters since subjects who participate in resource depletion show a different behavior as compared to subjects who are only called to restore it. Specifically, while the former are subject to behavioral lock-ins that influence the success of restoration, the latter are more prompt to restore the more the resource is depleted.