The Sustainable use of Common Resources in the Game Keep Fishin’: A Systematic Replication

Abstract

In recent decades, the excessive use of renewable natural resources has jeopardized their preservation, prompting behavior analysts to examine the consumption of common-pool resources and explore the use of gamification to study this phenomenon. The present study replicated Camargo (2019, Experiment 2), which developed a video game-based task simulating ocean fishing. This study aimed to evaluate two additional consequences (earning extra points and losing points) on the consumption of common-pool resources and examine the relationship between participants’ history of playing electronic games and real-life fishing with the consumption of common-pool resources. The experimental design incorporated the online game Keep Fishin’, with 75 university students participating, of whom 50 completed the game (16 in Part 1 and 44 in Part 2). The researcher allocated the participants into three experimental conditions: Control, Bonuses (extra points), and Penalties (losing points). Following the game’s completion, he administered an online questionnaire that solicited personal data and information about their history of video game usage and real-life fishing experiences. The results indicated a slight advantage for the Bonuses condition among Part 1 participants, who required fewer attempts to complete the game. However, this difference was not statistically significant. Participants who entered Part 2 exhibited no significant differences between conditions. Furthermore, Part 1 participants of the Bonuses group showed a higher estimated number of fish caught than the Penalty group. Part 2 participants demonstrated no differences across the three conditions. Additionally, participants from both parts in the Bonus condition exhibited the highest estimated average of catch-release fish responses. In contrast, those in the Penalty condition demonstrated a lower average number of such responses than the others. The findings indicate that the behavior exhibited by Part 1 participants, where the game was more complex, was affected by the consequences. The effective management of resources was paramount for the successful completion of the game, as it required the maintenance of a sufficient catch to sustain life. These data corroborate Camargo’s results, which also noted a prevalence of the catch-release fish response among participants in the Control and Bonus conditions. In the present study, the catch-release response was not related to participants’ experience with real-life fishing activities, which may be attributable to the fact that the participants were students with limited experience in this type of sport. The findings of this study suggest that the two types of consequences (earning extra points and losing points) presented during the Keep Fishin’ online game affected the estimated number of catch-release fish responses, allowing us to suggest that this game is an appropriate resource to investigate the effects of differential consequences on the consumption of common-pool resources.