The Commons Dilemma

• Hardin's (1968) work represents the first major contemporary analysis of the commons dilemma.

• Harding noted that there are no effective technological solutions to this problem, but only a moral one - mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon.

• Hardin's "tragedy of the commons" is not really a theory, but rather an "ideal type" (see Weber, 1949). Thus it serves as a useful reference point from which to judge real world collective dilemmas.

• For social psychologists and sociologists the necessity of tragedy in "resource commons" is an empirical question.

• Social scientists study, through a variety of means, the critical variables implicated in commons dilemmas, the conditions in which the "tragedy occurs", and conditions that seem to prevent "tragedy" from occurring.

• Since Hardin's original (1968) article, collective dilemmas have been studied by scholars within a variety of disciplines (e.g. see Hardin and Baden, 1977).

• It is a central problem that cuts a theoretical swath through the social sciences as well as a number of other disciplines.

• We will review some of the research findings of experimental social psychology.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

• Experimental research on collective dilemmas have taken the form of N-person games; these have their roots in the Prisoner’s dilemma.

a b

c d

Confess Not Confess

Payoff Matrix for the Prisoners’ DilemmaBased on Years in Prison.

Confess

Not Confess

First Prisoner

SecondPrisoner

-8 -10

0 -2

-8 0

-10 -2

The Prisoner’s Dilemma

-- A Variation Incorporating Collective Norms.

a b

c d

Confess Not Confess

Payoff Matrix for the Prisoners’ DilemmaBased on Norms and Potential Sanctions.

Confess

Not Confess

First Prisoner

SecondPrisoner

-8 -10

-10 -2

-8 -10

-10 -2

• The validity of game simulations appears to be an open question.

• However, many participants seem to get so caught up in the simulations that their behavior resembles that of what one would expect in real world dilemma situations.

Information and Communication

• Information has been identified as an important variable in collective dilemmas (Edney, 1980).

• In some laboratory research it has been demonstrated that informing participants about the possible consequences of their actions can be effective in preventing commons problems from arising (Stern, 1976).

• Communication is perhaps the most obvious and most researched variables in this paradigm.

• It has generally been observed that when games are structured so that participants can communicate with one another, "cooperation" increases.

• The importance of communication on cooperation seems apparent; communication probably interacts with a number of other variables in affecting cooperation in collective dilemmas (for instance: territories, group size, visibility, trust, and attributions about others behavior;

Trust

• Trust that others will act pro-socially (or lack thereof) is an important factor in collective dilemmas

Visibility and Group Size

• Visibility is a variable which likely interacts with trust in affecting behavior in collective dilemmas.

• If people's choices are highly visible, their actions are easily evaluated.

• Others can then respond to the individual's behavior by rewarding or punishing her, or by changing their own behavior.

• A seemingly related finding is that people in large groups cooperate less than people in small groups.

• These findings would seem to overlap with the work of Latane' and Darley (1968, 1970) on the diffusion of responsibility.

• In many collective dilemmas it may not be clear who is responsible, or in fact, if an individual's behavior has a significant impact on a collective outcome.

Territories

• One solution to the commons problem has been to create territories.

• The creation of territories reduces the number of people exploiting the resource, and in empirical research has been found to increase the size of resource stocks

Sanctioning and Organizational Solutions

• In some real world collective dilemmas, people organize to further their collective interests.

• In experimental research, several variations of this solution have been examined.

• For example, Caldwell (1976) found that when subjects are able to punish selfish participants, cooperation increases.

Summary

• Many treatments of collective dilemmas (including Hardin's) have been based on the "rational man" depiction of human nature as espoused in the tenets of classical economic and political theory.

• Experimental social psychology has broadened the focus by examining the effects of social interaction and cognition in addition to the influence of the payoff structure on behavior.

• What emerges from the collective dilemma literature is that solutions have to be pursused outside of the assumptions laid down in Hardin's paradigm (see Berkes, 1985).

• For instance, norms and social values can be established which alter a payoff structure that formerly favored self-interested behavior (Heath, 1976).

• Further, fines and sanctions can be enforced to support such prosocial norms and values (Yamagishi, 1986, 1988a, 1988b).

• Collective dilemmas have been studied by social psychologists through gaming approaches in a variable analysis fashion (e.g. examining group size, communication, territories, visibility, etc.).