Disturbance modifies payoffs in the explore-exploit trade-off

Shay O’Farrell (), James Sanchirico (), Orr Spiegel, Maxime Depalle, Alan C. Haynie, Steven A. Murawski, Larry Perruso and Andrew Strelcheck
Additional contact information
Shay O’Farrell: University of California Davis
Orr Spiegel: Tel Aviv University
Maxime Depalle: University of California Davis
Alan C. Haynie: Alaska Fisheries Science Center
Steven A. Murawski: University of South Florida
Larry Perruso: Southeast Fisheries Science Center
Andrew Strelcheck: Southeast Regional Office

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Decision-making agents face a fundamental trade-off between exploring new opportunities with risky outcomes versus exploiting familiar options with more certain but potentially suboptimal outcomes. Although mediation of this trade-off is essential to adaptive behavior and has for decades been assumed to modulate performance, the empirical consequences of human exploratory strategies are unknown beyond laboratory or theoretical settings. Leveraging 540,000 vessel position records from 2494 commercial fishing trips along with corresponding revenues, here we find that during undisturbed conditions, there was no relationship between exploration and performance, contrary to theoretical predictions. However, during a major disturbance event which closed the most-utilized fishing grounds, explorers benefited significantly from less-impacted revenues and were also more likely to continue fishing. We conclude that in stochastic natural systems characterized by non-stationary rewards, the role of exploration in buffering against disturbance may be greater than previously thought in humans.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-11106-y

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