Paper short abstract:

Demonstrating an ease to play face-to-face experimental CPR board game which is built on complexity and realism in the grazing system game, we show how recent tropical storm referred to as “ANA” affected cooperative behavior of the flood victims and those who were no affected by floods in Zambia.

Paper long abstract:

Environmental problems being a social dilemma impacts on decision making in a number of ways. In this study, we investigate the differences in cooperation behavior between the communal farmers affected by floods (flood victims) and those who were not affected in Namwala district of Zambia. We report a chain of incentivized field experiments built a common pool resource system (CPR). Depending on the decision-making behaviors in preceding rounds of the game, subjects faced with differences in the conditions of resource availability, and also differences in both the need to coordinate and to cooperate amongst themselves. Our findings indicate that despite subject behaving differently, flood victims behaved more cooperatively as they sustained about 49% of the grazing communal land in good condition while the unaffected farmers only maintained about 21% of the grazing plots in good condition.

After analyzing different resource availability, we still found that subjects from Kabulamwanda site (flood victims) behaved more cooperatively in most of the grazing conditions and had higher real-life payoffs than the subjects from Nakamboma study sites who were not affected by the floods.