The sport of surfing is best enjoyed with one rider on one wave, but crowding makes that optimal assignment increasingly hard to attain. This study examines the phenomenon of surf localism, whereby competitors are excluded from waves by intimidation and the threat of violence. An alternative way to accommodate crowds is contained in the surfer’s code, which sets informal rules and self-enforced regulations to avoid conflict in the water. Both regimes establish property rights over common pool resources with no state intervention, creating a setting wherein users face the question of cooperation or conflict. The disposition to cooperate and follow norms has been shown to vary substantially across different cultures, though. Employing data from over seven hundred surf spots on the European Atlantic coast, this study reports evidence that certain informal cultural norms significantly reduce the probability of violent exclusion, while formal state institutions mostly are irrelevant. The results also indicate that informal norms become more important with greater resource quality and, possibly, with increasing scarcity.

冲浪运动最好由一名骑手在一波中享受，但拥挤使得最佳任务越来越难以实现。本研究考察了冲浪地方主义现象，即通过恐吓和暴力威胁将竞争对手排除在海浪之外。另一种容纳人群的方法包含在冲浪者守则中，该守则设定了非正式规则和自我执行的规定，以避免在水中发生冲突。两种制度都在没有国家干预的情况下对公共池资源建立了产权，创造了一种用户面临合作或冲突问题的环境。然而，合作和遵守规范的倾向已被证明在不同的文化中存在很大差异。利用来自欧洲大西洋沿岸 700 多个冲浪点的数据，这项研究报告的证据表明，某些非正式文化规范大大降低了暴力排斥的可能性，而正式的国家机构大多无关紧要。结果还表明，随着资源质量的提高以及稀缺性的增加，非正式规范变得更加重要。