Turn-taking behavior is observed in a variety of field and laboratory settings. An example of turn taking concerns the use of common-pool resources (CPRs) such as fisheries, irrigation systems, and forests. In communities that depend heavily on such resources for their economic livelihood, failure to resolve problems related to the use and preservation of these resources can lead to significant welfare loss and violent conflicts. One illustration of the conflicts studied in the CPR literature is the game of CPR assignment in Ostrom et al. (1994, pp. 58-61).
This game captures, in the simplest fashion, a situation in which two fishermen independently decide to go to one of two fishing spots in their community. The good spot has a value of h, and the bad spot has a value of l, where h>l> 0. If the two fishermen choose different spots, each will obtain the respective value of the spot. If they choose the same spot, they will split the value of the spot equally.
Both coordination and conflict elements (Friedman, 1994, pp. 7-8; Camerer, 2003, p. 354) are present in this game. To maximize total surplus, the fishermen should choose different fishing spots; however, they may end up at the same spot if there is no coordination. Moreover, a conflict element is present because while both players prefer going to different spots rather than to the same spot, each of them prefers to be the one who goes to the good spot while her opponent choosing the bad spot. If this game is played repeatedly, one might expect that some sort of rotation scheme, in which the fishermen take
turns going to the good spot, will eventually develop as a method of achieving intertemproal cooperation in allocating the CPRs. In fact, Berkes (1992) reports that fishermen in Turkey employ a turn-taking scheme to allocate fishing spots. Turn-taking schemes in the use of irrigation system have been adopted in Spain and the Philippines (Ostrom, 1990)
Turn taking is also observed in other settings. For example, faculty members in a department may use turn taking to resolve the question of who will serve as the departmental representative on a university committee. Soldiers in a military operation often take turns to serve as the “point man” in dangerous missions (Bergerud, 1993). These examples possess the feature of the repeated best-shot public good game (Harrison and Hirshleifer, 1989). Turn taking in another game–the repeated battle of the sexes–has also been mentioned in the literature, dating back to Luce and Raiffa (1957).
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