Elephants painted with various national flags play with a soccer ball during a World Cup promotional show at an elephant tourist camp. 

The elephants working in tourism camps may seem to be less endangered on a physical level other than inappropriate diet and shelter, but they suffer decreased welfare from long periods of working hours. The problem of overworking originates essentially from the use of one elephant by a number of mahouts. Each mahouts wants to profit from the elephant as much as they can, leading to the elephant often denied adequate resting time.

The pursuit of individual self-interest may lead to the longevity of the elephants being questionable. This is also known as “Tragedy of the Commons” where the user of a common resource are caught in an inevitable process that leads to damaging the very resources which they depended on (Ostrom et al., 1999). The mahouts individual decisions accumulated to an over usage of the elephants which places the elephants at potential destruction. In this case, it involves ordinary people doing ordinary things (Gardner et al., 2002) whereby the mahouts train their elephants for shows to earn profit for themselves. However, the fact that it is from a common pool resources whereby mahouts have unrestricted access to the elephants is putting their lives at risk.

Four Proposed Solution Approaches

1) Government Laws, Regulations and Incentives
Laws can be implemented to encourage specific pro-social individual behaviours and discourage antisocial behaviours. Government can introduce laws to protect the welfare of elephants. Set a limit to the number of working hours for an elephant. If the mahouts make the elephant over worked the limited number of hours, he will be fined. However, it may not be easy to ensure that the mahouts are obeying the laws. Government officials can conduct spot-check at elephant tourism camps to ascertain that the basic welfare of the elephants are met. This may serve as a deterrence for the mahouts from overworking the elephants.

2) Education
Through education, it aims to describe the nature and severity of the declining population of the elephants in an effort to change people’s attitude towards it. To convince them that the issue is grave and important enough to warrant their immediate personal action. In addition, it outlines the specific actions people can take to help solve the problem.

It can be in a form of advertisement to enhance the importance of elephants in Thai culture. Focusing on the various actions that people engage in which places the elephants’ lives in danger. For example, exploiting the elephants, making them work long hours, roaming around the streets, and poaching elephants for their ivory are harming the lives of the elephants. This help to convince the public that action on their part is essential to protect and sustain the lives of elephants.

3) Small-Group/Community Management
Certain arrangements in a community can help to encourage pro-elephant welfare behaviour. Elephant tourism camps operate in a community based where people informally develop and mutually enforce their own rules of individual behaviour to solve the issue of overworked elephants. Rules such as ensuring the elephants have sufficient rest and their wellbeing are taken care of can be implemented in the camp. People will tend to follow the rules out of mutual respect and out of a sense of obligation to the group or duty as a group member. Most importantly, it helps to promote healthy living of the elephants.

4) Moral, Religious and Ethical Appeals
Elephant is part of Thai culture and national symbol. It can therefore be used as an approach to encourage proper behaviour towards elephants. Protecting their lives, showing them with respect, and providing them with proper welfare is a form of showing their moral and values. This will help the people and the elephants to live in harmony.