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Building Trust to Solve Commons Dilemmas: Taking Small Steps to Test an Evolving Theory of Collective Action

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Games, Groups, and the Global Good

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Abstract

Extensive field research has found that when users of a resource do gain good feedback about the effect of their actions on a resource and can build norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness, they are frequently able to craft new institutions to solve puzzling dilemmas. We need to ask: How do different kinds of institutions support or undermine norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness? The finding from many field studies throughout the world that monitoring and graduated sanctions are close to universal in all robust common-pool resource (CPR) institutions is important as it tells us that without some external support of such institutions it is unlikely that reciprocity alone will allow individuals to solve CPR problems over time. On the other hand, the sanctions are graduated rather than initially severe. The current theory of crime deterrence – based on strict expected value theory – does not explain the graduated nature of these sanctions. But if people can learn to value trust and reciprocity and use them as fundamental norms for organizing their lives, they can agree on a set of rules that they agree to follow. Then graduated sanctions are a way of informing those, who have made an error or faced some emergency temptation, that others are watching and, if someone else were to break a rule, they would likely be observed. Thus, continuing to follow a positive norm of reciprocity is reasonable and it is then feasible to build trust over the long term.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See the special feature of PNAS of September 2007, where fourteen scholars from multiple fields took a major initiative to move “Beyond Panaceas” and to help develop a framework for diagnosing problems of social-ecological systems and reduce the tendency to think that there are optimal solutions for all kinds of commons problems characterized by huge diversity in their attributes, history, productivity, and scale.

  2. 2.

    These three broad clusters of variables are core elements used in the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework that has evolved from more than three decades of field research conducted by scholars associated with the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. For an extended explanation of the IAD framework see Ostrom (2005).

  3. 3.

    For an in-depth discussion of the problems of recommending panaceas, see the Special Feature of PNAS mentioned in note 1 above.

  4. 4.

    One of the more successful efforts to create a private property-rights system for inshore fisheries has been developed over time in British Columbia after some initial efforts to create rules to limit fishing rights were not successful (Clark 2006). One of the costly but important attributes of the newer system of rules that has been evolved is that there is a monitor on every boat that is recording where the boat goes, the amount of fish harvested, any by-catch that is thrown over the side of the boat, and the amount of fish sold. The monitoring system is costly, but it does appear that over time fishers have begun to see the logic of the rule system that has been developed, agree to reduce their overharvesting, and know that others are being held to follow the rule.

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Acknowledgment

An earlier version was presented at the symposium on “Games, Groups, God(s), and the Global Good” held at Princeton University, October 4–6, 2007, and for the Tanner Lecture at the University of Michigan, November 2, 2007. The support of the MacArthur Foundation and the National Science Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. I deeply appreciate the wonderfully helpful comments by Giangiacomo Bravo, Marco Janssen, Simon Levin, Tun Myint, Claudia Pahl-Wostl, and James Walker, and the excellent editing of Patty Lezotte.

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    Ostrom, E. (2009). Building Trust to Solve Commons Dilemmas: Taking Small Steps to Test an Evolving Theory of Collective Action. In: Levin, S. (eds) Games, Groups, and the Global Good. Springer Series in Game Theory. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_13

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