| Leadership | Underlying independent variable | Informal leaders reduce the transaction costs of coordination and coming to agreements and thus favor collective management of environmental commons. Informal leaders may also hold formal positions in organizations. | Formal leader or informal leader |
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| Transaction costs | Proximate independent variable | Leaders are willing to take on coordination tasks and reduce transaction costs of carrying those tasks collectively | Low |
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| Leadership authority | Moderating independent variable | The capacity to coordinate of leaders is connected to their autonomy; without autonomy (i.e., from higher level authorities), such capacity to coordinate may not necessarily improve user's welfare maintain appropriate levels of extraction | High |
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| Leadership accountability | Moderating independent variable | Accountable leaders have lower incentives to rent seek or act in ways that do not contribute to the group's welfare | High |
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| Collective action | Intermediate outcome | Leaders promote participation in collective ventures and collective decision making. | High |
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| Commons condition trend | Final outcome | High levels of collective-action help to sustain the commons that is being managed. | Remained the same or improved |
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