FISH 3.1 Home Page

Introduction

FISH 3.1 is a computer program designed by University of Victoria professor Robert Gifford and programmed by Jonas Gifford for studying the resource management behavior of individuals and small groups. It is useful for studies often called commons dilemmas, resource dilemmas, social dilemmas, or social traps. FISH 3.1 can be run with all human fishers (any number at one time), or with one human fisher and any number of computer fishers. It is written entirely in Java 1.1 and is portable to any Java-enabled platform.

Features

FISH 3.1 supports a fully networked and interactive environment. Any number of oceans can be managed by one server program, and any number of participants from anywhere on the internet from any mixture of Java-enabled platforms can share these oceans and fish in real time.

Specifically, FISH 3.1 allows the study's investigator to define:

the size of the fish stock (the maximum is several hundred)
the number of seasons (replenishment trials) for the simulation (no maximum)
the regeneration rate of the fish stock
the greediness of computer fishers
the uncertainty in the fish stock
the probability that a cast will be successful (from 0 to 1)
which information is displayed about the other fishers
the profits and expenses of fishing, including
- the cost per second of being at sea
- the cost of leaving port
- the profits per fish
the initial balances of all fishers
the messages that appear as instructions before the simulation begins, and the messages that are shown after the simulation ends

Screen Shots

Click here for some screen shots of the application.

Access

Copies are available by special request to Dr. Gifford. Send him email at rgifford@uvic.ca to request a copy. Distribution packages are available for both Microsoft and Sun virtual machines. Consult the manual for details on these choices.

Documentation

See the manual for detailed documentation.

Questions or Comments

Questions or comments about the program's concept and design should be directed to Dr. Gifford (at rgifford@uvic.ca). Questions about the software implementation and usage should be directed to Jonas Gifford (at jgifford@uvic.ca).