TY - JOUR
T1 - Games of corruption
T2 - How to suppress illegal logging
AU - Lee, Joung Hun
AU - Sigmund, Karl
AU - Dieckmann, Ulf
AU - Iwasa, Yoh
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank the following colleagues for their helpful comments: De Roos, A., Elmqvist, T., Jusup, M., Mooney, H., Ohtsuki, H., Sasaki, A., Sasaki, T., Yahara, T., Yamaguchi, S., and Zhang, B.. This research was initiated through JHL’s participation in the Young Scientists Summer Program (YSSP) of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). Additional support through the following grants is gratefully acknowledged: Environment Research and Technology Development Fund (S9) of the Ministry of the Environment, Japan (to YI), a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (to YI), Grant #RFP-12-21 from the Foundational Questions in Evolutionary Biology Fund (to KS), and Grant TECT I-106 G11 from the Austrian Science Fund (to UD) as part of a multinational collaborative research project selected by the European Science Foundation for the European Collaborative Research Programme “The Evolution of Cooperation and Trading” .
Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd.
PY - 2015/2/1
Y1 - 2015/2/1
N2 - Corruption is one of the most serious obstacles for ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation. In particular, more than half of the loss of forested area in many tropical countries is due to illegal logging, with corruption implicated in a lack of enforcement. Here we study an evolutionary game model to analyze the illegal harvesting of forest trees, coupled with the corruption of rule enforcers. We consider several types of harvesters, who may or may not be committed towards supporting an enforcer service, and who may cooperate (log legally) or defect (log illegally). We also consider two types of rule enforcers, honest and corrupt: while honest enforcers fulfill their function, corrupt enforcers accept bribes from defecting harvesters and refrain from fining them. We report three key findings. First, in the absence of strategy exploration, the harvester-enforcer dynamics are bistable: one continuum of equilibria consists of defecting harvesters and a low fraction of honest enforcers, while another consists of cooperating harvesters and a high fraction of honest enforcers. Both continua attract nearby strategy mixtures. Second, even a small rate of strategy exploration removes this bistability, rendering one of the outcomes globally stable. It is the relative rate of exploration among enforcers that then determines whether most harvesters cooperate or defect and most enforcers are honest or corrupt, respectively. This suggests that the education of enforcers, causing their more frequent trialing of honest conduct, can be a potent means of curbing corruption. Third, if information on corrupt enforcers is available, and players react opportunistically to it, the domain of attraction of cooperative outcomes widens considerably. We conclude by discussing policy implications of our results.
AB - Corruption is one of the most serious obstacles for ecosystem management and biodiversity conservation. In particular, more than half of the loss of forested area in many tropical countries is due to illegal logging, with corruption implicated in a lack of enforcement. Here we study an evolutionary game model to analyze the illegal harvesting of forest trees, coupled with the corruption of rule enforcers. We consider several types of harvesters, who may or may not be committed towards supporting an enforcer service, and who may cooperate (log legally) or defect (log illegally). We also consider two types of rule enforcers, honest and corrupt: while honest enforcers fulfill their function, corrupt enforcers accept bribes from defecting harvesters and refrain from fining them. We report three key findings. First, in the absence of strategy exploration, the harvester-enforcer dynamics are bistable: one continuum of equilibria consists of defecting harvesters and a low fraction of honest enforcers, while another consists of cooperating harvesters and a high fraction of honest enforcers. Both continua attract nearby strategy mixtures. Second, even a small rate of strategy exploration removes this bistability, rendering one of the outcomes globally stable. It is the relative rate of exploration among enforcers that then determines whether most harvesters cooperate or defect and most enforcers are honest or corrupt, respectively. This suggests that the education of enforcers, causing their more frequent trialing of honest conduct, can be a potent means of curbing corruption. Third, if information on corrupt enforcers is available, and players react opportunistically to it, the domain of attraction of cooperative outcomes widens considerably. We conclude by discussing policy implications of our results.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.10.037
DO - 10.1016/j.jtbi.2014.10.037
M3 - Article
C2 - 25451516
AN - SCOPUS:84919332811
SN - 0022-5193
VL - 367
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Journal of Theoretical Biology
JF - Journal of Theoretical Biology
ER -