Back to the future: An experiment on ecological restoration
通过实验研究个人参与生态恢复的意愿，发现资源消耗经历会影响后续恢复行为，消耗者易陷入行为锁定，而新参与者更愿在资源枯竭时积极恢复。
The urgency of climate, biodiversity, and pollution crises has prompted international and national institutions to move beyond the prevention and mitigation of damages and to design policies aimed at promoting ecological restoration. In this paper, we address this emerging policy challenge by presenting experimental evidence on individuals’ propensity to contribute to restoration activities. Specifically, our design links a common pool resource game to a public good game to investigate how previous resource exploitation influences restoration decisions. We find that history matters since subjects who participate in resource depletion show a different behavior as compared to subjects who are only called to restore it. Specifically, while the former are subject to behavioral lock-ins that influence the success of restoration, the latter are more prompt to restore the more the resource is depleted.