Game Theory Tools for Improving Ecological Restoration Outcomes
Successful restoration and maintenance of ecological functions often requires understanding local decision making and behavior, as discussed in the introductory and subsequent chapters of this volume. Furthermore, successfully completing and maintaining m
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Game Theory Tools for Improving Ecological Restoration Outcomes Mark Buckley and Karen Holl
Successful restoration and maintenance of ecological functions often requires understanding local decision making and behavior, as discussed in the introductory and subsequent chapters of this volume. Furthermore, successfully completing and maintaining most restoration projects requires participation and cooperation from a range of stakeholders, including local and state government agencies and officials, and local businesses and neighboring landowners. Several fields of human and social analysis consider decision making and behavior. The field of economics usually starts from a set of assumptions based on limited resources, trade-offs, and rational (self-interested) actors. Some uses of limited natural resources, particularly consumptive uses, preclude ecological functions and processes that, among other things, provide ecosystem goods and services to society (Daily 1997). Due to new awareness and potentially new value from these ecosystem goods and services, some communities decide the losses of these goods and services are no longer justified. These reversal decisions leading to restoration projects are not always unanimously supported throughout the community, and conflicts can arise. Understanding individual decision making and behavior that runs counter to restoration goals can help to identify restoration strategies that account for these dynamics and avoid unintended consequences. Game theory, in its application as a field of economics, provides quantitative analytical techniques specific to individual decision making, particularly for situations in which decisions by individuals interact and determine outcomes. Many insights have come from analyzing very simple situations, such as deciding where to eat or how to meet up with someone (without cell phones), that have been usefully applied to much more complex problems. Game theory research intensified during the Cold War in attempts to understand international conflicts, particularly those potentially involving nuclear weapons (Schelling 1960). Game-theoretic analyses have since expanded to consider situations in business, politics, sociology, biology, and more (e.g., Casson 1994; Gintis 2000). Thomas Schelling, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences and close adviser to several U.S. presidents during the Cold War era, has said his recommendations for perilous situations, such as the Cuban Missile D. Egan (eds.), Human Dimensions of Ecological Restoration: Integrating Science, Nature, and Culture, 239 The Science and Practice of Ecological Restoration, DOI 10.5822/978-1-61091-039-2_17, © Island Press 2011
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power: restoration economics
Crisis and a direct telephone hotline between the White House and the Kremlin, came from observing interactions within his family (Schelling 1966). The United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics each preferred to avoid nuclear war, but several plausible scenarios could have led to such an outcome. Whi
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