Introduction

This introductory chapter ties unrecognized insights about collective action and mosquito control with the robust literature on self-governance to ask the following question. How can individuals voluntarily limit free riding and resolve collective action problems to control mosquito populations? The main problem is that collective action arises when people face contradictory private and social incentives, which often occurs when providing mosquito control and is often resolved via coercion. While the entomologist Leland Howard implicitly recognized this problem over one hundred years ago, and his insights are discussed throughout the book, few public health scholars advanced the idea. Following Toqueville, Olson, Ostrom, Cheung, and others, however, we can clarify the conditions under which people face collective action problems and resolve them in voluntary ways. With a focus on human behavior and analytical tools of economics, we can discern whether people voluntarily provide mosquito control, how they do it, and if they overcome collective action problems. The chapter develops these issues and presents an initial answer to the main question, namely that people overcome collective action problems and provide mosquito control when they can alter their private and social incentives, often within settings that foster market interactions, civil society, and self-governance.