Collective Action Problems Galore

Earlier in the semester we discussed collective action problems. Collective action problems are situations in which everyone involved would benefit from cooperation, but individuals have an incentive not to if they believe others will cooperate instead. These problems often result in free riding and prisoner’s dilemma type situations as one party is only looking out for his or her own self interests. Since this lecture back in early October, I have encountered collective action problems in all three of my other classes.

This video clip from a Dilbert episode explains a prisoner's dilemma: 

More recently, in my American Government class, we spent a great deal of time learning about collective dilemmas, or situations that arise when the goals of two groups differ. These are fairly common, especially in politics when people must work together to accomplish a single goal. There are three different types of collective dilemmas. The first type is a principal-agent problem, or a problem that arises when there is a conflict of interest between two groups or individuals who must make a decision. This may occur when one party has information that the other is lacking, or when the two parties disagree on what action should be taken. The second type of a collective dilemma is a coordination problem. These types of problems occur when one does not know what the other party is going to do, yet still needs to negotiate a problem. The example my Professor gave here was two cars that are about to crash. Finally, the third types of collective dilemmas are collective action problems, which we learned about in Poli Sci 101.

When we learned about collective dilemmas in my American Government class, we learned about it through Mancur Olson’s perspective. Olson thought that small groups were the answer to collective-action problems. Larger groups will have higher initial costs and they will not be able to further their common interests as much as a small group. Small groups, however, have fewer opportunities to free ride, and individuals get a larger “piece of the pie” in the end. 

Photo: People and the Commons

In my Environment 201 class, we also learned about similar situations with Garret Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons. Many people pollute because they feel that they will not make a big enough impact to make a considerable difference. Since they think others are recycling, they feel it is unnecessary for them to contribute. This obviously becomes an issue when everyone thinks with this mindset.

The approaches I learned about in my Environment class and Poli Sci 101 were the most similar. Both suggest that equal cooperation is the most logical solution. However, in my American Government class, Olson believes that free riding is inevitable, and the only way to prevent free riding is to eliminate the opportunity by spreading the responsibility among fewer individuals.

Image by James Yang

A common, real life example of a collective action problem, especially for students, is working on a group project. With an extremely high incentive to free ride, what is the most efficient approach to assure equal participation? Is it better when professors make group members complete task-lists and peer evaluations to ensure an equal division of work, or is it better to just limit group sizes?  Is forcing an equal level or cooperation enough, or is Olson correct in saying that the only way to truly eliminate the possibility of free riding to eliminate large groups? Personally, after working on many group projects, I have found that free riding still occurs in small groups, and it can be very difficult to give a fellow classmate a poor ranking on a peer evaluation.

When I was deciding how to invest my six units of kapital for this class, I chose not to participate in a group project. My decision was partially based on my lack of creativity, but also because I feared that it would result in a collective action problem. If one of my group members had less kapital invested in our project, how could I be convinced he or she would be completely dedicated? However, if everyone is made aware of exactly how much each person is able to benefit from the work, than the work can be divided accordingly. While I originally thought this may be a problem, I now think this could be an alternative, possibly even more efficient, solution to collective action problems.