Abstract: . . .  the first experiment will be about only one consumat that is deliberating over its’ consumption. 7.1: Varying the time horizon of a single, deliberating consumat In the first simulation experiments we investigate how deliberation works in managing a resource. These experiments imply that we confront consumats with different time-horizons with a resource, and observe how deliberation affects the resource size and the consumat . . .
. . .  known as Tit-for-Tat (TfT). Two TfT automata will quickly arrive at stable cooperating behaviour. However, if one of the automata makes a mistake (operationalised as ‘noise’), this stable cooperation disappears. Since then, many developments have taken place with respect to multi-agent simulation of commons dilemmas. Some of these developments were aimed at finding better decision strategies. Within this context evolutionary strategies have been developed which involve adaptation to the behaviour of other agents in the game (e.g., Axelrod, 1987; Macy, 1996). Other developments were aimed at developing . . .
. . .  interaction between consumers, we propose to model more than one consumer, thereby using a ‘multi-agent’ modelling approach. Placing the simulated consumers in a simple environment where they are depending on a common resource, offers us a framework to experiment with the social dynamics governing the social dilemma. Level of need satisfaction Opportunities Abilities Uncertainty Memory (mental map) Deliberating Imitating Social comparison Repeating Opportunity consumption Behavioural control Cognitive processing Expectations regarding the outcomes of opportunity consumption Opportunity consumption similar . . .
. . .  Traffic Psychology COV University of Groningen Grote Kruisstraat 2/I 9712 TS GRONINGEN The Netherlands tel: +31503636758 fax: +31503636784 e-mail: COV . INFO @ PPSW . RUG . NL www: http://www.ppsw.rug.nl/cov/index.htm Consumats in a commons dilemma Testing the behavioural rules of simulated consumers Centre for Environmental and Traffic Psychology Page 2 2 Contents Abstract 3 1: Introduction 5 2: The commons dilemma 7 3: Experimenting with simulated commons dilemmas 9 4: A conceptual model of individual consumer behaviour 11 5: The multi agent modelling approach 15 6: Operationalising the consumat . . .
. . .  experiment with different strategies to alter the behavioural dynamics. In the following sections we will present the results of a series of experiments we performed with the consumats as circumscribed above. The first series of experiments as presented in section 7 is intended to demonstrate the performance of the different consumat rules. Section 8 presents a second series of experiments is intended to investigate the effects of environmental uncertainty and accessibility of the resource. These experiments are aimed at gaining a better understanding of the behavioural dynamics that provoke over-consumption. . . .
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