Cargando…

Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons

Alone and together, climatic changes, population growth, and economic scarcity create shared problems that can be tackled effectively through cooperation and coordination. Perhaps because cooperation is fragile and easily breaks down, societies also provide individual solutions to shared problems, s...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Gross, Jörg, De Dreu, Carsten K.W.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469947/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31001579
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7296
_version_ 1783411709113794560
author Gross, Jörg
De Dreu, Carsten K.W.
author_facet Gross, Jörg
De Dreu, Carsten K.W.
author_sort Gross, Jörg
collection PubMed
description Alone and together, climatic changes, population growth, and economic scarcity create shared problems that can be tackled effectively through cooperation and coordination. Perhaps because cooperation is fragile and easily breaks down, societies also provide individual solutions to shared problems, such as privatized healthcare or retirement planning. But how does the availability of individual solutions affect free-riding and the efficient creation of public goods? We confronted groups of individuals with a shared problem that could be solved either individually or collectively. Across different cost-benefit ratios of individually versus collectively solving the shared problem, individuals display a remarkable tendency toward group-independent, individual solutions. This “individualism” leads to inefficient resource allocations and coordination failure. Introducing peer punishment further results in wasteful punishment feuds between “individualists” and “collectivists.” In the presence of individual solutions to shared problems, groups struggle to balance self-reliance and collective efficiency, leading to a “modern tragedy of the commons.”
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-6469947
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2019
publisher American Association for the Advancement of Science
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-64699472019-04-18 Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons Gross, Jörg De Dreu, Carsten K.W. Sci Adv Research Articles Alone and together, climatic changes, population growth, and economic scarcity create shared problems that can be tackled effectively through cooperation and coordination. Perhaps because cooperation is fragile and easily breaks down, societies also provide individual solutions to shared problems, such as privatized healthcare or retirement planning. But how does the availability of individual solutions affect free-riding and the efficient creation of public goods? We confronted groups of individuals with a shared problem that could be solved either individually or collectively. Across different cost-benefit ratios of individually versus collectively solving the shared problem, individuals display a remarkable tendency toward group-independent, individual solutions. This “individualism” leads to inefficient resource allocations and coordination failure. Introducing peer punishment further results in wasteful punishment feuds between “individualists” and “collectivists.” In the presence of individual solutions to shared problems, groups struggle to balance self-reliance and collective efficiency, leading to a “modern tragedy of the commons.” American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019-04-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6469947/ /pubmed/31001579 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7296 Text en Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) , which permits use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, so long as the resultant use is not for commercial advantage and provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Gross, Jörg
De Dreu, Carsten K.W.
Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title_full Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title_fullStr Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title_full_unstemmed Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title_short Individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
title_sort individual solutions to shared problems create a modern tragedy of the commons
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6469947/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31001579
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau7296
work_keys_str_mv AT grossjorg individualsolutionstosharedproblemscreateamoderntragedyofthecommons
AT dedreucarstenkw individualsolutionstosharedproblemscreateamoderntragedyofthecommons