Regulation and Enforcement in the Exploitation of the Groundwater Resource

Sustainable pumping of water resource requires intervention by a public agency in order to avoid over-exploitation. We study the evolution of compliance and regulation of groundwater resource when farmers can decide whether to comply or not with pumping quotas in an imitation rule described by replicator dynamics. The public agency sets the optimal quotas and the farmers can choose between compliance or violation of them. We investigate the policy of the public agency which may impose sanctions to discourage withdrawals that deviate from the optimal quota. Using numerical simulations, we analyze the effects that parameters have on the equilibrium of the aquifer and on the farmers’ behavior.