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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Collective action problem | 6/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T07:13:10.731395+00:00 | kb-cron |
=== Structural solutions === Structural solutions change the rules of the game either through modifying the social dilemma or removing the dilemma altogether. Field research on conservation behaviour has shown that selective incentives in the form of monetary rewards are effective in decreasing domestic water and electricity use. Furthermore, numerous experimental and case studies show that cooperation is more likely based on a number of factors, including whether or not individuals have the ability to monitor the situation, to punish or "sanction" defectors, if they are legitimized by external political structures to cooperate and self-organize, can communicate with one another and share information, know one another, have effective arenas for conflict resolution, and are managing social and ecological systems that have well-defined boundaries or are easily monitorable. Yet implementation of reward and punishment systems can be problematic for various reasons. First, there are significant costs associated with creating and administering sanction systems. Providing selective rewards and punishments requires support institutions to monitor the activities of both cooperators and non-cooperators, which can be quite expensive to maintain. Second, these systems are themselves public goods because one can enjoy the benefits of a sanctioning system without contribution to its existence. The police, army, and judicial system will fail to operate unless people are willing to pay taxes to support them. This raises the question if many people want to contribute to these institutions. Experimental research suggests that particularly low trust individuals are willing to invest money in punishment systems. A considerable portion of people are quite willing to punish non-cooperators even if they personally do not profit. Some researchers even suggest that altruistic punishment is an evolved mechanism for human cooperation. A third limitation is that punishment and reward systems might undermine people's voluntary cooperative intention. Some people get a "warm glow" from cooperation and the provision of selective incentives might crowd out their cooperative intention. Similarly the presence of a negative sanctioning system might undermine voluntary cooperation. Some research has found that punishment systems decrease the trust that people have in others. Other research has found that graduated sanctions, where initial punishments have low severity, make allowances for unusual hardships, and allow the violator to reenter the trust of the collective, have been found to support collective resource management and increase trust in the system. Boundary structural solutions modify the social dilemma structure and such strategies are often very effective. Experimental studies on commons dilemmas show that overharvesting groups are more willing to appoint a leader to look after the common resource. There is a preference for a democratically elected prototypical leader with limited power especially when people's group ties are strong. When ties are weak, groups prefer a stronger leader with a coercive power base. The question remains whether authorities can be trusted in governing social dilemmas and field research shows that legitimacy and fair procedures are extremely important in citizen's willingness to accept authorities. Other research emphasizes a greater motivation for groups to successfully self-organize, without the need for an external authority base, when they do place a high value on the resources in question but, again, before the resources are severely overharvested. An external "authority" is not presumed to be the solution in these cases, however effective self-organization and collective governance and care for the resource base is. Another structural solution is reducing group size. Cooperation generally declines when group size increases. In larger groups people often feel less responsible for the common good and believe that their contribution does not matter. Reducing the scale of a problem (such as dividing a large scale dilemma into smaller more manageable parts) is often an effective tool in raising cooperation under such circumstances. Additional research on governance shows that group size has a curvilinear effect, since at low numbers, governance groups may also not have enough people to effectively research, manage, and administer the resource system or the governance process. Another proposed boundary solution is to remove the social from the dilemma, by means of privatization. This restructuring of incentives would remove the temptation to place individual needs above group needs. However, it is not easy to privatize moveable resources such as fish, water, and clean air. Privatization also raises concerns about social justice as not everyone may be able to get an equal share. Privatization might also erode people's intrinsic motivation to cooperate, by externalizing the locus of control. In society, social units which face a social dilemma within are typically embedded in interaction with other groups, often competition for resources of different kinds. Once this is modeled the social dilemma is strongly attenuated. There are many additional structural solutions which modify the social dilemma, both from the inside and from the outside. The likelihood of successfully co-managing a shared resource, successfully organizing to self-govern, or successfully cooperating in a social dilemma depends on many variables, from the nature of the resource system, to the nature of the social system the actors are a part of, to the political position of external authorities, to the ability to communicate effectively, to the rules-in-place regarding the management of the commons. However, sub-optimal or failed results in a social dilemma (and perhaps the need for privatization or an external authority) tend to occur "when resource users do not know who all is involved, do not have a foundation of trust and reciprocity, cannot communicate, have no established rules, and lack effective monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms."
== See also ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links == Homepage of the social-dilemma network