Modelling human behaviour in social dilemmas using attributes and heuristics [Elektronische Ressource] / Eva Ebenhöh

Modelling human behaviour in social dilemmasusing attributes and heuristicsDissertationEva Ebenhoh¨Institute of Environmental Systems ResearchUniversity of Osnabru¨ck, GermanyEva.Ebenhoeh@usf.uos.dehttp://www.usf.uos.de/∼eebenhoe30th June 2006iiAbstractA question concerning not only modellers but also practitioners is: underwhat circumstances can mutual cooperation be established and maintainedby a group of people facing a common pool dilemma? A step before thisquestion of institutional influences there is need for a different way of mod-elling human behaviour that does not draw on the rational actor paradigm,because this kind of modelling needs to be able to integrate various devia-tions from this theory shown in economic experiments. We have chosen anewapproachbasedonobservationsinformoflaboratoryandfieldobserva-tionsofactualhumanbehaviour. Wemodelhumandecisionmakingasusingan adaptive toolbox following the notion of Gigerenzer. Humans draw on anumber of simple heuristics that are meaningful in a certain situation butmay be useless in another. This is incorporated into our agent-based modelby having agents perceive their environment, draw on a pool of heuristicsto choose an appropriate one and use that heuristic. Behavioural differ-ences can be incorporated in two ways. First, each agent has a number ofattributes that differ in values, for example there are more and less coop-erative agents.