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Foraging Experiment

A foraging environment where participants interact with each other in a controlled, shared, virtual resource environment.

• participants move and interact with a resource and each other in a real-time spatially explicit environment
• support for interactive quizzes, real-time logged chat, message censoring, etc.
• structured and configurable instructions -> round -> debriefing cycle ending with final payment screen
• experiment data is stored in a binary format and in XML, capturing every event that occurred within the experiment. Save file converters are available to transform the binary experiment data into CSVs and QuickTime movies so any given experiment run can be replayed.
• round and experiment parameterization via Java .properties files. Standard configuration parameters include the number of people per group, ability to sanction, method of sanctioning (target participant is "frozen" for X amount of time, real-time direct fine / costly sanctioning or post-round sanctioning), ability to communicate via real-time chat, ability to vote for rules, field of vision, resource mobility, growth rate, and more.

The foraging experiment has been run at Indiana University, Arizona State University, Stockholm, and Bratislava and is available under the GPL v3 open source license. If you are interested in using the software in your own research or would like to test or run experiments similar to Lab Experiments for the Study of Social-Ecological Systems, please feel free to contact us.

Documentation

• Installation, Configuration, and Deployment instructions