Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Cooperation Across Organizational Boundaries: Experimental Evidence From A Major Sustainability Science Project, Timothy M. Waring, Sandra Hughes Goff, Julia Mcguire, Z. Dylan Moore, Abigail Sullivan

School of Economics Faculty Scholarship

Engaged research emphasizes researcher–stakeholder collaborations as means of improving the relevance of research outcomes and the chances for science-based decision-making. Sustainability science, as a form of engaged research, depends on the collaborative abilities and cooperative tendencies of researchers. We use an economic experiment to measure cooperation between university faculty, local citizens, and faculty engaged in a large sustainability science project to test a set of hypotheses: (1) faculty on the sustainability project will cooperate more with local residents than non-affiliated faculty, (2) sustainability faculty will have the highest level of internal cooperation of any group, and (3) that cooperation may …