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Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality

Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare. Yet, public goods rely on cooperation which can break down because of free-riding incentives. Previous research extensively investigated how groups solve this free-rider problem but ignored another challenge to publ...

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Autores principales: Gross, Jörg, Veistola, Sonja, De Dreu, Carsten K. W., Van Dijk, Eric
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7560835/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33057001
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18896-6
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author Gross, Jörg
Veistola, Sonja
De Dreu, Carsten K. W.
Van Dijk, Eric
author_facet Gross, Jörg
Veistola, Sonja
De Dreu, Carsten K. W.
Van Dijk, Eric
author_sort Gross, Jörg
collection PubMed
description Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare. Yet, public goods rely on cooperation which can break down because of free-riding incentives. Previous research extensively investigated how groups solve this free-rider problem but ignored another challenge to public goods provision. Namely, some individuals do not need public goods to solve the problems they share with others. We investigate how such self-reliance influences cooperation by confronting groups in a laboratory experiment with a safety problem that could be solved either cooperatively or individually. We show that self-reliance leads to a decline in cooperation. Moreover, asymmetries in self-reliance undermine social welfare and increase wealth inequality between group members. Less dependent group members often choose to solve the shared problem individually, while more dependent members frequently fail to solve the problem, leaving them increasingly poor. While self-reliance circumvents the free-rider problem, it complicates the governing of the commons.
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spelling pubmed-75608352020-10-19 Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality Gross, Jörg Veistola, Sonja De Dreu, Carsten K. W. Van Dijk, Eric Nat Commun Article Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare. Yet, public goods rely on cooperation which can break down because of free-riding incentives. Previous research extensively investigated how groups solve this free-rider problem but ignored another challenge to public goods provision. Namely, some individuals do not need public goods to solve the problems they share with others. We investigate how such self-reliance influences cooperation by confronting groups in a laboratory experiment with a safety problem that could be solved either cooperatively or individually. We show that self-reliance leads to a decline in cooperation. Moreover, asymmetries in self-reliance undermine social welfare and increase wealth inequality between group members. Less dependent group members often choose to solve the shared problem individually, while more dependent members frequently fail to solve the problem, leaving them increasingly poor. While self-reliance circumvents the free-rider problem, it complicates the governing of the commons. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-10-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7560835/ /pubmed/33057001 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18896-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Gross, Jörg
Veistola, Sonja
De Dreu, Carsten K. W.
Van Dijk, Eric
Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title_full Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title_fullStr Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title_full_unstemmed Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title_short Self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
title_sort self-reliance crowds out group cooperation and increases wealth inequality
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7560835/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33057001
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-18896-6
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