Reciprocity and the tragedies of maintaining and providing the commons
Open accessAbstract
Social cooperation often requires collectively beneficial but individually costly restraint to maintain a public good1-4, 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 cooperation7-10, are substantially diminished under Maintenance compared to 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.
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Rewards are insufficient to sustain cooperation.
“However, it has been argued that rewards are insufficient to sustain cooperation83.”
From Cooperation without punishment (2023) · cites this paper as [83]
The paper’s Abstract says that cooperation was lower in the maintenance dilemma despite identical incentives, and that incentives might crowd out reciprocity. This supports a qualified concern about relying on incentives, but the paper does not test rewards specifically or establish that they are generally insufficient to sustain cooperation. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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References 56 · Cited by 147
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- [2]Hardin G The tragedy of the commons Science 1968 162 1243 5699198
- [4]Collier P The plundered planet 2011 Penguin Books London
- Authors
- Gächter, S., Kölle, F., & Quercia, S.
- Affiliations
- University of Nottingham (GB)
- University of Cologne (DE)
- University of Bonn (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Gächter, Simon
- Venue
- Nature Human Behaviour
- Published
- 2017-08-28
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 9
- Pages
- 650-656
- ISSN
- 2397-3374 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC5604734
- OpenAlex
- W2748715391
- Cited by
- 147
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 17 · 2022: 22 · 2021: 18 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 22 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 2
- FWCI
- 29.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- Locations
- Nature Human Behaviour (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Nottingham ePrints (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion)
- Repository@Nottingham (University of Nottingham) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Economic and Social Research Council (ES/K002201/1)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
- Keywords
- reciprocity, public goods, tragedy of the commons, status quo effect, cooperation, positive reciprocity, negative reciprocity, punishment
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