Transcript Commons_Overheads1

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.
ASSUMPTIONS OF THE COMMONS DILEMMA PARADIGM:
1.
The users must be selfish and they must be able to pursue
private gain even against the best interests of the community as a
whole.
2.
The environment must be limited, and there must be a resourceuse pattern in which the rate of exploitation exceeds the natural rate of
replenishment of the resource.
3.
The resource must be collectively owned by society (common
property) and freely open to any user (open-access).
Source: Berkes (1985:199).
• 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.
Payoff Matrix for the Prisoners’ Dilemma
Based on Years in Prison.
Second
Prisoner
Confess
Not Confess
a
-8 b
-10
First
Prisoner
Confess
-8
c
0
0 d
-2
Not Confess
-10
-2
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
-- A Variation Incorporating Collective Norms.
Payoff Matrix for the Prisoners’ Dilemma
Based on Norms and Potential Sanctions.
Second
Prisoner
Confess
Not Confess
a
-8 b
-10
First
Prisoner
Confess
-8
c
-10
-10 d
-2
Not Confess
-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.).