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Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons

Nature Human Behaviour volume 1, pages 650–656 (2017)Cite this article

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Abstract

Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good1,2,3,4, or it needs costly generosity to create one1,5. Status quo effects6 predict that maintaining a public good is easier than providing a new one. Here, we show experimentally and with simulations that even under identical incentives, low levels of cooperation (the ‘tragedy of the commons’2) are systematically more likely in maintenance than provision. Across three series of experiments, we find that strong and weak positive reciprocity, known to be fundamental tendencies underpinning human cooperation7,8,9,10, are substantially diminished under maintenance compared with provision. As we show in a fourth experiment, the opposite holds for negative reciprocity (‘punishment’). Our findings suggest that incentives to avoid the ‘tragedy of the commons’ need to contend with dilemma-specific reciprocity.

Humans are an exceptionally cooperative species able to collaborate for the creation of common benefit9,11,12,13. Collective actions such as voting, participating in political movements, the provision of the welfare state, charity, volunteering and teamwork are examples of public goods that come into existence by the generosity of many people who put the greater good before self-interest1,5. Cooperation is, however, not always about providing collectively valuable resources, but often about maintaining existing ones1,2,3,4. Limiting carbon dioxide emissions, sustaining natural resources or maintaining common pastures and biodiversity are important examples of cooperation problems that require restraint in exploiting existing socially beneficial public goods.

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Fig. 1: Isomorphic social dilemmas of maintaining and providing a public good.
Fig. 2: Public good levels in maintenance and provision.
Fig. 3: Reciprocity in maintenance and provision.
Fig. 4: Simulated effective contribution ratios.
Fig. 5: Partners with punishment.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. Alonso Arechar, B. Beranek, T. Cason, J. Cox, F. Fallucchi, U. Fischbacher, M. García-Vega, R. Hernán-González, D. Houser, L. Molleman, D. van Dolder, T. Weber, O. Weisel and various seminar audiences for helpful comments. B. Beranek provided valuable research assistance. This work was supported by the European Research Council grant ERC-AdG 295707 COOPERATION and the Economic and Social Research Council Network for Integrated Behavioural Sciences (ES/K002201/1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Simon Gächter

  2. CESifo, 81679, Munich, Germany

    Simon Gächter

  3. IZA Institute of Labour Economics, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Simon Gächter

  4. Faculty of Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne, 50923, Cologne, Germany

    Felix Kölle

  5. Institute for Applied Microeconomics, University of Bonn, 53113, Bonn, Germany

    Simone Quercia

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  1. Simon Gächter
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S.G., F.K. and S.Q. developed the research ideas and designed the study. F.K. and S.Q. conducted the experiments and analysed data. S.G., F.K. and S.Q. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Simon Gächter.

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Gächter, S., Kölle, F. & Quercia, S. Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons. Nat Hum Behav 1, 650–656 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-017-0191-5

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