Home▸Society & Economics▸The Tragedy of the Commons: Modelling a Shared Resource

🌾 The Tragedy of the Commons

Interactive 3D shared pasture where adjusting the number of self-interested agents and their harvest rate shows the shared resource depleting faster than it can regenerate.

Society & Economics3DEasy60 FPS

A shared pasture where self-interested herders each graze as much as they can, driving total grass biomass down faster than it can regrow — unless the group agrees to a sustainable quota.

🔬 What It Demonstrates

Every patch of grass regrows logistically toward full health on its own, but herders act independently, each maximising their own harvest. Total consumption scales with herder count and harvest rate, and once it exceeds the pasture's regrowth capacity, biomass collapses.

🎮 How to Use

Adjust the number of herders and their harvest rate against the grass regrowth rate, and watch the pasture's colour and height respond in real time. Toggle the sustainable quota to see how a shared limit keeps the commons healthy.

💡 Did You Know?

Elinor Ostrom's Nobel-winning research found that real-world commons — fisheries, irrigation systems, forests — are often managed sustainably by the communities that depend on them, through locally agreed rules rather than privatisation.

⚙ Under the hood

Interactive 3D shared pasture where adjusting the number of self-interested agents and their harvest rate shows the shared resource depleting faster than it can regenerate.

tragedy-of-the-commonsshared-resourcesgame-theoryresource-depletionagent-based-modelingsociety

3D · Three.js / WebGL renderer · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install