Abstract

The effective and efficient management of common-pool resources (CPR) constitutes a challenge, especially in the case of the resource water. Typically, a multitude of different resource users cause its degradation and over-harvesting. The problem's complexity increases when spatial or temporal cause-effect mismatches occur. Regulatory arrangements and policies should thus ideally account for cross-sectoral, multi-level and trans-boundary characteristics of the resource. Coordinated action among a variety of actors and stakeholders from different jurisdictions and decisional levels seems key to solve such a CPR problem. In our study, we focus on cooperation in the CPR setting of water quality management and ask the following research questions: How can cooperation among actors in a CPR problem situation be established? And what drives two actors to cooperate with each other? We argue that the degree of threat to a CPR is an important driver for collective action and focus on actors' exposure to and their perception of a threat to the CPR river surface water. Furthermore, we rely on applications of the ecology of games framework, taking the larger institutional context of CPR management into account. Choosing the cross-border region around the city of Basel in the trans-boundary catchment area of the river Rhine as case study, we are focusing on persistent pollutants in surface water. We gathered network data of actors engaged in the management process of the CPR problem of micro-pollutants in the case study region as well as data on their perception of the CPR problem and their participation in water body associations. Data on actors' problem exposure to the CPR problem was derived through natural scientific modelling. Applying advanced network statistics (Exponential Random Graph Models, ERGM) we test which of the factors increase the chance that two actors engage in cooperation with each other. Results show that joint participation in a water body association strongly relates to actors' cooperation regarding the CPR problem while actors' problem exposure seems to be an essential trigger as well. Problem perception is a more delicate factor which hints at having effects on cooperation depending on its intensity and interpretation by actors. Our study confirms the importance of ecology of games-type of arrangements in the establishment of cooperation in CPR problem settings and further highlights the necessity to include more systematically the effects CPR problems have on actors when analyzing CPR problem settings.