Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons
Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good, or it needs costly generosity to create one. Status quo effects predict that maintaining a public good is easier than providing a new one. Here, we show experimentally and with simu...
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Published: |
Nature Publishing Group
2017
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45170/ |
| _version_ | 1848797082011303936 |
|---|---|
| author | Gaechter, Simon Kölle, Felix Quercia, Simone |
| author_facet | Gaechter, Simon Kölle, Felix Quercia, Simone |
| author_sort | Gaechter, Simon |
| building | Nottingham Research Data Repository |
| collection | Online Access |
| description | Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good, or it needs costly generosity to create one. Status quo effects 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’) 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, 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. |
| first_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:13Z |
| format | Article |
| id | nottingham-45170 |
| institution | University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus |
| institution_category | Local University |
| last_indexed | 2025-11-14T19:58:13Z |
| publishDate | 2017 |
| publisher | Nature Publishing Group |
| recordtype | eprints |
| repository_type | Digital Repository |
| spelling | nottingham-451702020-05-04T19:03:16Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45170/ Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons Gaechter, Simon Kölle, Felix Quercia, Simone Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good, or it needs costly generosity to create one. Status quo effects 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’) 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, 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. Nature Publishing Group 2017-09-01 Article PeerReviewed Gaechter, Simon, Kölle, Felix and Quercia, Simone (2017) Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons. Nature Human Behaviour, 1 . pp. 650-656. ISSN 2397-3374 Tragedy of the Commons public goods strong and weak reciprocity evolution of human cooperation https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0191-5 doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0191-5 doi:10.1038/s41562-017-0191-5 |
| spellingShingle | Tragedy of the Commons public goods strong and weak reciprocity evolution of human cooperation Gaechter, Simon Kölle, Felix Quercia, Simone Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title | Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title_full | Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title_fullStr | Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title_full_unstemmed | Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title_short | Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| title_sort | reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons |
| topic | Tragedy of the Commons public goods strong and weak reciprocity evolution of human cooperation |
| url | https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45170/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45170/ https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/45170/ |