Regime shifts in a social-ecological system

This replicator dynamics model considers the case of a common-pool resource system where social ostracism may be used to compel non-complying harvesters to avoid over-exploitation of the resource base. Here, non-compliant harvesters (i.e., defectors) are identified by their payoff strategy and incur an 'ostracism' penalty proportional to the number of compliant harvesters (i.e., co-operators) in the system. When the ostracism effect is equivalent to the number of compliant harvesters and the resource inflow rate is constant, regime shifts are removed from the purely social and ecological subsystems in the model. However, bifurcations remain possible due to the interactions between the social and ecological components. Changing the cost of effort, strength of ostracism, or multiple drivers readily triggers a regime shift.