The Role of Communication in Sustaining Cooperation within Commons Dilemmas: A Game-Theoretic Analysis

Abstract

Common-pool resources (CPRs), such as irrigation systems and fisheries, are characterized by rivalry in consumption and costly exclusion. Consequently, over-extraction and free-riding are often individually rational yet collectively destructive. This paper examines how communication can reshape these dynamics in two contrasted cases: Andean irrigation in Peru and the Newfoundland cod fishery. Small repeated-game models demonstrate that organized, open communication, coupled with visible signals and graduated penalties, reduces the benefits of defection or race benefits, increases anticipated penalties for straying, and increases perceived losses from suboptimal effort. The result is a lower threshold for the discount factor required to sustain self-enforcing cooperation. The research combines three mechanisms of failure (information frictions, power asymmetries, weak enforcement) and offers an implementable bundle, signal alignment, asymmetry guards, and rule-plus-talk, with clear roles, routines, and metrics. Consequently, the study provides an exportable institutional design for resource management agencies seeking to foster long-term, self-sustaining cooperation that reduces reliance on continuous and costly external policing.