A Paradox of Environmental Awareness Campaigns

Koulovatianos, Christos (2010): A Paradox of Environmental Awareness Campaigns.

Abstract

We build a workable game of common-property resource extraction under rational Bayesian learning about the renewal prospects of a resource. We uncover the impact of exogenously shifting the prior beliefs of each player on the response functions of others. What we find about the role of environmental conservation campaigns is paradoxical. To the extent that such campaigns instill overly high pessimism about the potential of natural resources to reproduce, they create anti-conservation incentives: anyone having exploitation rights becomes inclined to consume more of the resource earlier, before others overexploit, and before the resource's stock is reduced to lower levels.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: renewable resources; resource exploitation; non-cooperative dynamic games; Bayesian learning; stochastic games; commons; rational learning; uncertainty; beliefs
• Subjects: Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q5 - Environmental Economics > Q50 - General; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O13 - Agriculture ; Natural Resources ; Energy ; Environment ; Other Primary Products; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D84 - Expectations ; Speculations; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search ; Learning ; Information and Knowledge ; Communication ; Belief ; Unawareness; Q - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics ; Environmental and Ecological Economics > Q2 - Renewable Resources and Conservation > Q20 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C72 - Noncooperative Games; O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth > O1 - Economic Development > O12 - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development; L - Industrial Organization > L7 - Industry Studies: Primary Products and Construction > L70 - General; C - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods > C7 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory > C73 - Stochastic and Dynamic Games ; Evolutionary Games ; Repeated Games

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