A New Strategy to Solve “the Tragedy of the Commons” in Sustainable Grassland Ecological Compensation: Experience from Inner Mongolia, China

Abstract

Based on the principle of “who protects and benefits will compensate”, in recent years, many Chinese herders have begun to voluntarily participate in sustainable grassland ecological compensation by donating money. However, this traditional strategy may have brought about “the tragedy of the commons”. A new strategy described as “wealthy herders pay money, ordinary herders participate in supervision, and relevant departments post a list of participants at the end of each month”, which was trialed in the Keshiketeng Banner, Inner Mongolia, China, attempts to solve “the tragedy of the commons”. This new strategy is neither “Leviathan” nor “Privatization”; it creates a third way for grassland herders to achieve spontaneous cooperation in protecting grassland ecology. This article presents a theoretical analysis framework and experimental simulation method using this new strategy. Considering the importance of face culture and gossip in herders’ social lives, this study used a public goods game (PGG) model to analyze and experimentally simulate the effect of this new strategy. The simulated data show the following: (1) Compared with the traditional strategy, this new strategy promotes cooperation more effectively. It requires less money, time and human capital from herders and can mobilize more herders to participate in sustainable grassland ecological compensation, leading to the emergence of a cooperation equilibrium among herders. (2) In this new strategy, the total contributions of herders are inversely proportional to herders’ “reputation tolerance”, and they are directly proportional to herders’ “income level”, “total budget” and “satisfaction and emotion”. The cooperation level is inversely proportional to “reputation tolerance” and “income level” and directly proportional to “total budget” and “satisfaction and emotion”. (3) The advantage of this new strategy is that it is robust to changes in the exogenous coefficient. Our research contributes to the application of the PGG model in the sustainable development of various resources and developing new approaches to mitigating “the tragedy of the commons”.