Environmental framing and left-wing political orientation promote sustainability in a US-based common-pool resource dilemma

Little research has explored whether framing effects differ based on political orientation in a Common-Pool Resource (CPR) dilemma. In this research, American Democrats and Republicans (N = 266 individuals recruited via Prolific Academic) played an online CPR game, FISH, framed either as an Environment Game (environment framing) or a Fishing Game (neutral framing). In groups of four, participants harvested fish from a shared ocean over eight seasons earning $.10 per fish caught. Unbeknownst to the participants, their three groupmates were in fact computerised players (bots). The interaction between political orientation as a dichotomous model (Democrat versus Republican) and framing condition was not significant. However, those playing the Environment Game were significantly more cooperative in the first season of play and across all seasons played than those playing the Fishing Game. Additionally, Democrats cooperated significantly more than Republicans in the first season, but not across all seasons played. Exploratory analyses show that the strength of a participant's political orientation affected cooperation to some degree, with strong Democrats playing the Environment Game cooperating at significantly higher rates than both strong Democrats playing the Fishing Game and strong Republicans in both framing conditions. Moderate Democrats and moderate Republicans cooperated comparably across all framing conditions.