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Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons

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Listed:
  • Simon Gächter

    (University of Nottingham
    CESifo
    IZA Institute of Labour Economics)

  • Felix Kölle

    (University of Cologne)

  • Simone Quercia

    (University of Bonn)

Abstract

Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good 1–4 , or it needs costly generosity to create one 1,5 . Status quo effects 6 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 cooperation 7–10 , 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.

Suggested Citation

  • Simon Gächter & Felix Kölle & Simone Quercia, 2017. "Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 1(9), pages 650-656, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nathum:v:1:y:2017:i:9:d:10.1038_s41562-017-0191-5
    DOI: 10.1038/s41562-017-0191-5
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