Your riverside parcel is the final link between farmland, a central woodland, and a western development site. A corridor forms if all four owners protect their land, but an early protector bears the cost if the others develop. Read the first outcome, identify the uncertainty, and design one commitment or guarantee. See how decisions change, then test your institution against rising land prices.
Stag hunt / assurance game: learn why groups coordinate on either a high-value cooperative equilibrium or a safer low-value equilibrium.
Your path through the game
First choose development, early protection, or a statement of conditional intent, then inspect all four outcomes. Choose one institution: an all-party commitment, a guarantee for early movers, or a payment for the crucial parcel. See how decisions change, then test the corridor, livelihoods, and trust against rising land prices.
Read the four owners’ concerns and choose how to use your land.
Choose one institution and see how the four owners respond.
Compare the corridor, livelihoods, and trust after land prices rise.
The people stay the same, but changing the agreement changes whether the land connects. See a hesitation about being the only person to lose give way to a shared corridor. Playing again with another institution lets you compare how cooperation forms and which vulnerabilities remain afterward.
Explore a stag hunt, also called an assurance game: cooperation creates greater value when everyone joins. Compare decisions before and after an institution is introduced to see how credible participation and protection against first-mover losses can change the group’s choices.
Whose concern did your institution reduce, and how? Explain why protection continued when land prices rose, and identify the burden that remained. Use that insight to think about what could support the first step when people make a shared local commitment.
Read not only who they are, but what they fear and the condition under which they will protect. Those rules are your evidence for choosing an institution.
