Elke U. Weber - Böcker

The "tragedy of the commons" is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. It has had tremendous value for stimulating research, but it only describes the reality of human-environment interactions in special situations. Research over the past thirty years has helped clarify how human motivations, rules governing access to resources, the structure of social organizations, and the resource systems themselves interact to determine whether or not the many dramas of the commons end happily. In this book, leaders in the field review the evidence from several disciplines and many lines of research and present a state-of-the-art assessment. They summarize lessons learned and identify the major challenges facing any system of governance for resource management. They also highlight the major challenges for the next decade: making knowledge development more systematic; understanding institutions dynamically; considering a broader range of resources (such as global and technological commons); and taking into account the effects of social and historical context.This book will be a valuable and accessible introduction to the field for students and a resource for advanced researchers.

What makes some decisions easy and others difficult? Research in judgment and decision making indicates that conflict plays a decisive role in decision-making processes. The essays in this book address questions about the causes of conflict and its effects on decision making and emotions, particularly (but not only) the emotion of regret. Several chapters address the role of attribute tradeoffs, such as that between money and risk, in the measurement of values for policy purposes. The chapters provide overviews of several research programs and present intriguing data. Methods involve hypothetical scenarios, other questionnaires, interviews, and observations of behavior outside the laboratory. Although most authors are influenced by psychology, others take economic and sociological approaches.