IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/jinsec/v10y2014i03p353-369_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Digging deeper into Hardin's pasture: the complex institutional structure of ‘the tragedy of the commons’

Author

Listed:
  • COLE, DANIEL H.
  • EPSTEIN, GRAHAM
  • MCGINNIS, MICHAEL D.

Abstract

A revised application of Ostrom's (Ostrom, 2007) Social-Ecological System (SES) framework to Hardin's ‘tragedy of the commons’ (Hardin, G. (1968), Science, 162(3859): 1243–1248) demonstrates that its institutional structure is more complex than either Hardin or Ostrom had imagined. The ‘tragedy’ arises from several interacting resources and institutions. If the grass on the pasture was not subject to appropriation, the cattle were not privately owned, or property- and contract-enforcement institutions supporting market exchange were absent, then the ‘tragedy of the commons’ would not have arisen regardless of the open-access pasture. This paper highlights the utility of the SES framework and the care required to apply it precisely to specific social-ecological situations.

Suggested Citation

  • Cole, Daniel H. & Epstein, Graham & Mcginnis, Michael D., 2014. "Digging deeper into Hardin's pasture: the complex institutional structure of ‘the tragedy of the commons’," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 10(3), pages 353-369, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:10:y:2014:i:03:p:353-369_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1744137414000101/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander Lord & Yiquan Gu, 2019. "Can the market be tamed? A thought experiment on the value(s) of planning," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(1), pages 11-24, February.
    2. Murtazashvili, Ilia & Murtazashvili, Jennifer, 2016. "The origins of private property rights: states or customary organizations?," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 105-128, March.
    3. Tortia, Ermanno C., 2017. "The firm as a common. The case of the accumulation and use of capital resources in co-operative enterprises," MPRA Paper 76735, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Safner, Ryan, 2016. "Institutional entrepreneurship, wikipedia, and the opportunity of the commons," Journal of Institutional Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 743-771, December.
    5. Ryan Safner, 2023. "Honor among thieves: how nineteenth century American pirate publishers simulated copyright protection," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 119-141, March.
    6. Gu, Yiquan & Lord, Alexander & Eika, Anders & Dethier, Perrine & Samsura, D. Ary A. & Nordahl, Berit Irene & Sommervoll, Dag Einar & van der Krabben, Erwin & Halleux, Jean-Marie, 2021. "Fair shares? Advancing land economics through cooperative game theory," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    7. Bonye, Samuel Ziem & Yiridomoh, Gordon Yenglier & Nsiah, Vivian, 2023. "Multi-stakeholder actors in resource management in Ghana: Dynamics of community-state collaboration in resource use management of the Mole National Park, Larabanga," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    8. Sarami Foroushani, Taraneh & Balali, Hamid & Movahedi, Reza & Partelow, Stefan, 2024. "Using local knowledge to assess the sustainability of groundwater resources: applying the social-ecological systems framework to the Hamedan-Bahar Plain, Iran," EconStor Preprints 289209, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    9. Falk, Thomas & Spangenberg, Joachim H. & Siegmund-Schultze, Marianna & Kobbe, Susanne & Feike, Til & Kuebler, Daniel & Settele, Josef & Vorlaufer, Tobias, 2018. "Identifying governance challenges in ecosystem services management – Conceptual considerations and comparison of global forest cases," Ecosystem Services, Elsevier, vol. 32(PB), pages 193-203.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:jinsec:v:10:y:2014:i:03:p:353-369_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/joi .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.