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Managing the Urban Commons

The Relative Influence of Individual and Social Incentives on the Treatment of Public Space

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Abstract

All communities have common resources that are vulnerable to selfish motives. The current paper explores this challenge in the specific case of the urban commons, defined as the public spaces and scenery of city neighborhoods. A theoretical model differentiates between individual incentives and social incentives for caring for the commons. The quality of a commons is defined as the level of physical (e.g., loose garbage) and social (e.g., public disturbances) disorder. A first study compared levels of disorder across the census block groups of a single city; the second compared the disorder generated by individual addresses in two neighborhoods. Each study found that homeownership, an individual incentive, was the main predictor of disorder. Owner-occupied parcels generated less disorder than their renter-occupied neighbors, but both parcel types produced less disorder in a neighborhood with greater homeownership. The results emphasize the need for considering both individual and social incentives for group-beneficial behaviors.

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Notes

  1. “Garbage” was left blank if the building fronted directly on the sidewalk, leaving no room for garbage to accumulate.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to acknowledge members of the Binghamton Neighborhood Project for their collaboration in developing the database that made this study possible, most importantly David Sloan Wilson, Susan Seibold-Simpson, Rick Kauffman, and Jim DeVona. Thanks also to Andrew Gallup, Omar Eldakar, Yasha Hartberg, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

    Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien

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  1. Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien
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Correspondence to Daniel Tumminelli O’Brien.

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The research published here was done while the author was at Binghamton University (New York).

Appendix

Appendix

Table 6 Standardized betas from a regression model using neighborhood descriptors, including ethnic composition, to predict levels of physical and social disorder
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O’Brien, D.T. Managing the Urban Commons. Hum Nat 23, 467–489 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-012-9156-6

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