Research

My research focuses on the co-evolution of cognitive, institutional and ecological processes. I am interested how people, their institutional rules and the environment they live in fit together. In the past, present and the future, from local scales to the global scale. I mainly use computational models, like agent-based models, in combination with laboratory experiments, surveys, case study analysis and stakeholder workshops. I worked on quite a number of topics, as you can see in my list of publications. At the moment my main research interests can be divided into three categories:

- Resilience and Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems (SESs)

SESs experience internal and external disturbances. What are configurations of institutional rules that maintain resilience of a SES, and creates sufficient incentives for people to experiment with new practices of using natural resources? Elinor Ostrom,  Marty Anderies and I use formal models to understand the interactions of resource users, public good providers and ecological dynamics. Public goods might increase efficiency of the system, but how does it affect resilience? We also start working with electrical engineers to apply robust control techniques to natural resource problems. Recent papers include:

- Anderies, J.M., M.A. Janssen and E. Ostrom (2004), A framework to analyze the robustness of social-ecological systems from an institutional perspective, Ecology and Society 9(1): 18
-Janssen, M.A., M.L. Schoon, W. Ke, K. Börner (2006), Scholarly networks on resilience, vulnerability and adaptation within the human dimensions of global environmental change, Global Environmental Change 16(3): 240-252 [pdf]

- Janssen, M.A., J.M. Anderies and E. Ostrom (2007), Robustness of Social-Ecological Systems to Spatial and Temporal Disturbance Regimes, Society and Natural Resources, 20(4): 307-322 [pdf]

- Anderies, J.M., A.A. Rodriguez, M.A. Janssen and O. Cifdaloz (2007), Panaceas, Uncertainty, and the Robust Control Framework in Sustainability Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, in press

- Collective action and the evolution of institutions

How do people change the rules of the game? Institutional rules are not fixed, but change over time. How do people know how to change the rule and anticipate better outcomes? What kind of institutional structures might evolve given certain cognitive and ecological processes and constitutional rules? For more information on this research area I refer to the websites of my NSF projects.

HSD project: Dynamics of Rules in commons dilemmas

CAREER award: Innovation of institutional rules in the governance of common resources

- Model-based Archaeology

Why do complex societies collapse? What make people move around in the ancient american south-west? Initial work related to the collapse of one settlement. In current work, as part of a large NSF funded project at ASU,  I develop stylized models to study the movement between settlements, the role of exchange networks and spatial/temporal heterogeneity of resources in the landscape.

Janssen, M.A., T.A. Kohler, and M. Scheffer (2003), Sunk-cost effects and vulnerability to collapse in ancient societies, Current Anthropology 44(5): 722-728 [pdf]

Janssen, M.A. and M. Scheffer (2004), Overexploitation of renewable resources by ancient societies and the role of sunk cost effects, Ecology and Society 9(1): 6. [online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol9/iss1/art6

- Diffusion processes

People imitate behavior of others, and this can affect the way innovations spread in a population. How does the structure of social interactions, social networks, affect these diffusion processes? Wander Jager, Alessio Delre and I study the effect of the imitation processes and the structure of social networks on market dynamics. We applied this work to the success of movies using survey data and macro-level statistics. With students at ASU I start to look at information diffusion in blogging, emails and internetshopping.

Related publications

- Janssen, M.A. and W. Jager (2001), Fashions, habits and changing preferences: simulation of psychological factors affecting market dynamics, Journal of Economic Psychology, 22:745-772 [pdf]
- Janssen, M.A. and W. Jager (2002), Stimulating diffusion of green products, Co-evolution between firms and consumers, Journal of Evolutionary Economics,  12: 283-30[pdf]
- Janssen, M.A. and W. Jager (2003), Simulating Market Dynamics: The Interactions of Consumer Psychology and Structure of Social Networks, Artificial Life 9: 343-356 [pdf]
- Jager, W. and M.A. Janssen (2003), Diffusion Processes in Demographic Transitions: A Prospect on Using Multi Agent Simulation to Explore the Role of Cognitive Strategies and Social Interactions, in A. Fürnkranz-Prskawetz and F.C. Billari (ed.) Agent-Based Computational Demography, Springer Verlag. pp. 55-72.
- Delre, S.A, W. Jager and M.A. Janssen (2007), Diffusion dynamics in small-world networks with heterogeneous consumers. Computational & Mathematical Organization Theory 13(2): 185-202 [pdf]

- Delre, S.A., W. Jager, M.A. Janssen, T.H.A. Bijmolt (2007), Targeting and timing promotional activities: An agent-based model for the takeoff of new products, Journal of Business Research 60: 825-835 [pdf]