Tragedy of the commons through regime shifts in eco-evolutionary dynamics of renewable resources with Allee effects

Unsustainable exploitation of environmental resources can destabilize ecosystems, increasing the risk of sudden collapse of common resource pools through regime shifts. This sudden collapse of common resources, also known as the tragedy of the commons, is a fundamental problem in game theory. In this study, we adopt an eco-evolutionary game-theoretic framework to study the dynamics of a coupled human-environment system with a renewable resource considering six distinct game combinations. The resource follows logistic growth with an Allee effect and is subject to a Holling type-I functional response. In particular, we focus on how variations in harvesting effort lead to the emergence of the tragedy of the commons through regime shifts. Our results unveil a rich spectrum of bifurcation mechanisms that can drive regime shifts. We further confirm that resource abundance is governed by both intrinsic ecological dynamics and emergent human behavior, with adaptive strategies and suitable incentives playing a key role in sustaining the system despite the presence of defectors. Furthermore, variations in system parameters can modulate the timing of environmental collapse, either delaying or accelerating its onset as the harvesting effort of defectors increases.