Irrigation experiment

A collective action / public goods experiment implemented in Java Swing and the sesef framework. The irrigation experiment places participants in an upstream-downstream scenario where participants are randomly partitioned into groups and can choose when to open or close their irrigation gates in real-time and have dedicated communication and investment rounds where they can coordinate on how much to invest in their common infrastructure.

publications

This software was used to generate the data published in

John M. Anderies, Marco A. Janssen, Allen Lee, Hannah Wasserman, Environmental variability and collective action: Experimental insights from an irrigation game, Ecological Economics, Volume 93, September 2013, Pages 166-176, ISSN 0921-8009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2013.04.010.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800913001390)

Data from this publication is currently archived at http://dev.commons.asu.edu/data/irrigation/all-data.zip

features

• participants are placed in randomized ordered groups (A -> E where A is upstream and E is downstream) and go through a series of chat -> investment -> real-time decision making rounds
• includes comprehension quizzes with detailed feedback, dynamic graph and chart visualizations via the excellent JFreeChart library
• round and experiment parameterization including:
  • chat and round duration
  • infrastructure decay and shocks to the infrastructure and water supply
  • initial endowment and payment exchange rate
  • limited information where participants can only communicate with and view information from their immediate neighbors

how to run the software

• install and setup Java, Ant, and Maven
• clone or download this codebase
• copy build.properties.example to build.properties and customize as needed, in particular server.address, web.dir, and codebase.url
• run ant deploy
• For a quick start demo, run the following on the command-line

% ant prepare-demo
% ant demo # this will start a server, a facilitator, and 5 client windows to form a full group

how to contribute

Please let us know if you are interested in extending or running this software.