Custodes Futurifor the advancement of humanity

Societal factor, barrier 2 of 6

Collective action problems

Hardin (1968) described the "tragedy of the commons." Olson (1965) showed small organized interest groups often defeat large diffuse public interests. Ostrom (1990) documented many communities that manage shared resources successfully through local rules and trust.

Evidence

  • Public goods experiments. Contributions fell to very low levels when free riders could not be punished, with 53% to 75% of participants contributing nothing by the final round. When participants could punish free riders, contributions rose toward full cooperation (Fehr and Gächter, 2000).
  • Real communities. A review of 91 studies of communities managing shared resources supported most of Ostrom's design principles for successful local governance (Cox et al., 2010).
  • Strength. The commons argument is rated C for the universal claim, while the evidence on local governance is rated B.

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the societal factor page.

  • Payments to landowners for keeping forest (Large trial, B). Paying people to protect a shared resource is one proposed answer to the tragedy of the commons. See "Earth's life-support systems" in the environmental factors for the Uganda trial and evidence that its effect faded after payments ended.
  • Community monitoring of shared resources, Ostrom-style (Large trial, B). Elinor Ostrom's work found that communities that manage commons well usually monitor use themselves. Harmonized randomized trials in six countries introduced community monitoring to 400 communities, with 347 control communities, most adopted regular monitoring within a year, and a meta-analysis found modest reductions in resource use and modest gains in user satisfaction and knowledge (Slough et al., 2021). Effects were modest and follow-up was about one year.
  • Climate clubs and carbon border charges (Approved but not scaled, C). A climate club is a group of countries that agree on carbon prices and charge non-members a penalty, so that free riding stops paying. Modeling found that without penalties only coalitions with minimal emission cuts are stable, but small trade penalties on non-participants can sustain a large coalition with deep cuts (Nordhaus, 2015). The European Union's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which prices the carbon in imported cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers, electricity, and hydrogen, moved from a transitional phase to its definitive regime on January 1, 2026 (European Commission, n.d.). Its effect on other countries' climate policy has not yet been evaluated.
  • Quadratic funding for public goods (Early trial, C). In quadratic funding, a matching pool tops up projects so that the number of contributors counts more than the size of gifts, which in theory funds public goods at the right level (Buterin et al., 2019). The authors note the design is vulnerable to collusion. The Gitcoin platform distributed over $60 million through quadratic funding, but in 2025 it shut down its software unit and the Grants Stack tool because profitability looked unrealistic, while keeping its grants program (Kuhn, 2025). No controlled evaluation of whether it funds better projects was found.
  • Assurance contracts with refund bonuses (Early trial, C). In an assurance contract, people pledge money that is only collected if a funding target is met. A "dominant" version also pays pledgers a bonus if the target is missed, which in theory makes contributing the best choice whatever others do (Tabarrok, 1998). In a laboratory experiment that mimicked a crowdfunding platform, refund bonuses substantially increased the rate of funding success when contributors could support several projects (Cason and Zubrickas, 2019). Evidence is from the laboratory only.
  • Reversed: Consumer carbon pricing in Canada (Failed or reversed, B). A carbon price makes polluters pay for a shared harm. Canada set its federal fuel charge to zero from April 1, 2025, and stopped requiring provinces to keep a consumer carbon price, while keeping carbon pricing for large industrial emitters (Department of Finance Canada, 2025).

Sources cited on this page

  1. Hardin, G. (1968). The tragedy of the commons. Science, 162(3859), 1243-1248. PubMed C Limited: for the universal claim
  2. Olson, M. (1965). The Logic of Collective Action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. C Limited
  3. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. B Moderate: book, case-based design
  4. Fehr, E., & Gächter, S. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90(4), 980-994. DOI A Strong: for the decline, B for punishment as a remedy
  5. Cox, M., Arnold, G., & Villamayor Tomás, S. (2010). A review of design principles for community-based natural resource management. Ecology and Society, 15(4), 38. Ecology and Society B Moderate
  6. Buterin, V., Hitzig, Z., & Weyl, E. G. (2019). A flexible design for funding public goods. Management Science, 65(11), 5171-5187. link C Limited
  7. Cason, T. N., & Zubrickas, R. (2019). Donation-based crowdfunding with refund bonuses. European Economic Review, 119, 452-471. link C Limited
  8. Kuhn, D. (2025, April 25). Ethereum public goods funding protocol Gitcoin winding down its software division. The Block. link B Moderate
  9. Nordhaus, W. (2015). Climate clubs: Overcoming free-riding in international climate policy. American Economic Review, 105(4), 1339-1370. link C Limited
  10. Slough, T., Rubenson, D., Levy, R., Alpizar Rodriguez, F., Bernedo Del Carpio, M., Buntaine, M. T., et al. (2021). Adoption of community monitoring improves common pool resource management across contexts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(29), e2015367118. link B Moderate
  11. Tabarrok, A. (1998). The private provision of public goods via dominant assurance contracts. Public Choice, 96(3-4), 345-362. link C Limited

Every source for this factor is listed on the societal factor page.