







































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 1(2): 101–105, July 2018 

NOTES FROM THE FIELD  
 

The Forest Game: Field Experiments as a Means to 
Influence Mental Models 
 

Liya Thomas , Sanoop V  and Vinita Rodrigues  
 
1. FORESTS AND LOCAL GOVERNANCE 

Forests play a vital role in carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, 
and livelihoods, along with providing other local and global ecosystem 
services. However, forests continue to be subject to anthropogenic 
pressures caused by changing land use patterns and over-grazing, among 
other pressures. Besides causing serious ecological problems, degradation of 
forests negatively impacts the livelihood of more than a billion people 
(Chhatre and Agrawal 2008). The basic livelihood of a large proportion of 
the rural poor residing in the remotest villages of India is dependent on 
forests. However, unfavourable property rights and weak institutional 
arrangements have resulted in a vast expanse of land being ill managed and 
a total loss of livelihood for a large section of the community (Nayak 2003). 

Common pool resource degradation is incorrectly attributed to ‘common 
property systems’; it is actually the result of disintegration of local-level 
institutional arrangements. A disintegrated institution leads to the incorrect 
application of ‘rule of capture’ on common pool resources, wherein each 
user tries to get as much as possible before others do (Bromley and Cernea 
1989). Forest conditions are determined largely by local governance 
institutions, which have the potential to respond to and affect biophysical 
and socio-economic factors impacting forests in the local context 
(Andersson and Agrawal 2011). Experiences from several states in India 

 
 Foundation for Ecological Security, Anand, Gujarat; liya@fes.org.in  

 Foundation for Ecological Security, Udaipur, Rajasthan; sanooplissah@gmail.com 
 Foundation for Ecological Security, Anand, Gujarat; viniro30@gmail.com 

Copyright © Thomas, Sanoop and Rodrigues 2018. Released under Creative Commons 
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581-6152 (print); 2581-6101 (web). 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.44  

https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v1i2.44


Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [102] 

suggest that, in the existing socio-economic and demographic conditions, 
participatory forest management is the most suitable survival strategy for 
the threatened Indian forest (Pandey 2007) 

 

2. FIELD EXPERIMENTS 

‘Experimental games’ was an effort (Ostrom, Walker, and Gardner 1992) to 
build game theoretical models in accordance with the institutional analysis 
and development (IAD) framework (Ostrom 2009). This participatory 
approach in collective action studies was conducted by involving 
communities in diagnosing constraints and solving problems by combining 
their local knowledge with the expertise of external researchers. Several 
experiments exist that present different dilemmas for collective action. One 
of the many advantages of a laboratory experiment is its ability to be 
replicated with modification. 

In this paper we will focus on field experiments conducted in Rajasthan, the 
‘Forest Game’. The Forest Game was designed keeping in mind its 
potential to create a real-life situation for individuals, thereby enabling them 
to better understand the impact of their behaviour on the given resource or 
on other communities and discuss likely institutional options to overcome 
them. This aims at generating an understanding of enforcement and its 
relationship with other factors that affect changes in forest conditions, 
which is critical to the sustainable governance of forest commons. 

The field experiments conducted over a period of two months in 30 villages 
gave us interesting insights into the minds of communities dependent on 
forests. These insights were drawn through our observations during the 
course of the game and community debrief. The three scenarios presented 
in the game were aimed at influencing mental models by enabling players 
understand how factors such as communication, monitoring, and 
sanctioning are crucial for effective resource governance. 

 

3. CATALYSING LOCAL FOREST GOVERNANCE: FIELD 
OBSERVATIONS AND LEARNINGS 

The Forest Game, depicts real life scenarios, enabling players to make 
harvesting decisions on a board that represents a degraded forest. The game 
begins with 50 trees; the number of trees may increase to a maximum of 
100 or decrease to a minimum of 4 depending on the harvest decisions 
made by players during the game. Players make harvest decisions in three 
scenarios—without communication, with communication, and 
communication with the provision to keep a guard to monitor harvesting 



[103] Liya Thomas, Sanoop V, and Vinita Rodrigues 

decisions and further to introduce sanctions. The game is followed by a 
community debrief, which attempts to trigger discussion around the playing 
pattern and how it influenced the condition of the forest, thereby initiating 
dialogue on aspects of collective action for forest governance. 

The initial rounds of the game, wherein players make harvest decisions 
without communicating with each other, aim at enabling participants realize 
the impact of individual decisions on the resource condition. Their 
understanding of the relationship between individual harvest decisions and 
overall resource conditions was reflected in several statements. Some were 
‘Cutting more trees is a loss to us’, ‘Let’s cut according to our needs; what 
will we do with the extra trees?’, and ‘If we keep cutting at this rate, soon 
there won’t be any left to cut.’ This understanding surfaced when the 
players were able to communicate with each other during the game.  

To generate the realization that forest degradation declines with an increase 
in local enforcement (Chhatre and Agrawal 2008), a rule-enforcing 
mechanism was introduced. This realisation occurred among players when 
the total harvest did not match the decision taken as a group. ‘Say 
something and do something else’ was the pattern followed in the game. 
Even though players discussed harvest choices before taking individual 
decisions, not everybody cut as many trees as they claimed they would. In 
the rounds where the concept of monitoring and sanctioning were 
introduced, we encountered instances wherein, players stated, ‘We do not 
need a guard; we know how to manage our forest ourselves.’ This initial 
aversion towards monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms during the game 
indicated the false notion that monitoring would prohibit access to the 
forest and lead to a decrease in income. However, in cases where players 
resolved to monitor and sanction activity, we observed players harvest trees 
more cautiously and responsibly than in the other two scenarios. 

The community debrief that followed the game provided community 
members a space to articulate their understanding that forests provide both 
tangible and intangible services. During a debrief in Rajasthan, an elderly 
community member said that ‘cutting trees is a necessity for subsistence 
needs such as firewood’ but also that ‘we receive rains because of the trees 
in the forest’. In another debrief, a woman said, ‘We are dependent on the 
forest, right from the time we are born up to the time we die. We need 
wood for both our cradles as well as our funeral pyres.’ These statements 
reflect that communities understand the social-cultural and ecological 
relevance of forests, and that these should be considered in making 
decisions for forest governance  

The potential of the game to trigger action for better forest governance was 
demonstrated during a community debrief in Gogunda block of Rajasthan, 



Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [104] 

wherein, after reflecting on the three sets of the game, players noticed how 
the trees in the forest gradually increased as they proceeded from not 
communicating to communicating and, ultimately, to monitoring and 
sanctioning. After reflecting on the dynamics of the game, community 
members resolved to form a village institution to govern their degraded 
forest. They decided to collectively contribute money for a guard, who 
would be appointed from the village itself. The community members also 
resolved to approach the local governance institution, ‘the panchayat’, 
collectively to undertake soil and water conservation activities under the 
Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. This 
would provide an additional source of income and simultaneously facilitate 
the process of restoration of their degrading common land. 

 

4. CONCLUSION 

The conversations during the game and debrief form a rich source of 
qualitative data pertaining to the whys and whats of research; why the 
community thinks in a particular way and what makes them think in this 
direction. Thus, the game as an action research tool provides both the 
community and facilitation team with insights on aspects such as collective 
action and incorporating mechanisms such as monitoring and sanctioning, 
which would need to be focused on for better forest governance. It also 
provides practitioners with valuable insights, which could enable them to 
provide informed suggestions to communities about the various schemes or 
provisions they could resolve to, for forest restoration and conservation. 
Further, the community debriefs create a space for transfer of knowledge 
within communities since people of all ages and genders are present during 
these meeting. 

Our experience with this field experiment, therefore, demonstrated its 
potential to trigger discussion on forest conservation and restoration and 
emphasised the importance of local governance mechanisms for better 
resource governance. 

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 

We thank the community members who devoted their valuable time and shared 
their insights during the field experiments.  

 

 



[105] Liya Thomas, Sanoop V, and Vinita Rodrigues 

REFERENCES 

Andersson, K. and A. Agrawal. 2011. “Inequalities, institutions, and 
forest  commons.” Global Environmental Change 21 (3): 866–75. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.03.004  

Bromley, Daniel W. and Michael M. Cernea. 1989. “The management of common 
property resources: Some conceptual and operational fallacies.” World Bank 
Discussion Papers. World Bank, Washington DC. 
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/548811468740174575/pdf/multi-
page.pdf  

Chhatre, Ashwini, and Arun Agrawal. 2008. “Forest commons and local 
enforcement.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of 
America 105 (36): 13286–91. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803399105  

Meinzen-Dick, R., M. DiGregorio and N. McCarthy. 2004. “Methods for studying 
collective action in rural development.” Agricultural Systems 82 (3): 197–214 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2004.07.006  

Ostrom, E. 2010. “Beyond markets and states: Polycentric governance of complex 
economic systems.” American Economic Review 100 (3): 641–72. 
https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.3.641  

Pandey, D. 2007. “Joint forest management in Rajasthan—Case studies of two 
villages in Udaipur district.” Financing Agriculture–A National Journal of Agriculture and 
Rural Development January-February: 12–21. 
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/7145/12-
21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y  

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2011.03.004
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/548811468740174575/pdf/multi-page.pdf
http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/548811468740174575/pdf/multi-page.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803399105
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agsy.2004.07.006
https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.3.641
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/7145/12-21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
https://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu/dlc/bitstream/handle/10535/7145/12-21.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

