Analyzing the sustainability of harvesting behavior and the relationship to personality traits in a simulated Lotka–Volterra biotope

By Christian Grabner, Heiko Hahn, Ulrike Leopold-Wildburger, Stefan Pickl

Abstract

For the analysis presented in this paper we use experiments to study human behavior in a simulation environment based on a simple Lotka–Volterra predator–prey ecology. The aim is to study the influence of different harvesting strategies and of certain personality traits derived from the Hamburg Personality Inventory (HPI) [Andresen, B., 2002. HPI – Hamburger Personlichkeitsinventar. Hogrefe, Gottingen] on the outcome in terms of sustainability and economic performance. The results of the empirical analysis show that the behavior that was expected to lead to higher performance indeed increases the success of the participants. The relationship between the personality traits and the performance of the subjects can also be corroborated by the results of the empirical analysis.

Link to material:http://ifors.org/developing_countries/downloads/sept2_2011/Grabner_2009_European-Journal-of-Operational-Research.pdf