A collective action problem or social dilemma is a situation in which all individuals would be better off cooperating but fail to do so because of conflicting interests between individuals that discourage joint action. The collective action problem has been addressed in political philosophy for centuries, but was most clearly established in 1965 in Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action.
Problems arise when too many group members choose to pursue individual profit and immediate satisfaction rather than behave in the group's best long-term interests. Social dilemmas can take many forms and are studied across disciplines such as psychology, economics, and political science. Examples of phenomena that can be explained using social dilemmas include resource depletion, low voter turnout, and overpopulation. The collective action problem can be understood through the analysis of game theory and the free-rider problem, which results from the provision of public goods. Additionally, the collective problem can be applied to numerous public policy concerns that countries across the world currently face.
Although he never used the words "collective action problem", Thomas Hobbes was an early philosopher on the topic of human cooperation. Hobbes believed that people act purely out of self-interest, writing in Leviathan in 1651 that "if any two men desire the same thing, which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies." Hobbes believed that the state of nature consists of a perpetual war between people with conflicting interests, causing people to quarrel and seek personal power even in situations where cooperation would be mutually beneficial for both parties. Through his interpretation of humans in the state of nature as selfish and quick to engage in conflict, Hobbes's philosophy laid the foundation for what is now referred to as the collective action problem.
David Hume provided another early and better-known interpretation of what is now called the collective action problem in his 1738 book A Treatise of Human Nature.
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The tyranny of small decisions is a phenomenon in which a number of decisions, individually small and insignificant in size and time perspective, cumulatively result in a larger and significant outcome which is neither optimal nor desired. The concept was first explored in an essay of the same name, published in 1966 by the American economist Alfred E. Kahn. The article describes a situation where a series of small, individually rational decisions can negatively change the context of subsequent choices, even to the point where desired alternatives are irreversibly destroyed.
In psychology, a social trap is a conflict of interest or perverse incentive where individuals or a group of people act to obtain short-term individual gains, which in the long run leads to a loss for the group as a whole. Social traps are the cause of countless environmental issues, including overfishing, energy "brownout" and "blackout" power outages during periods of extreme temperatures, the overgrazing of cattle on the Sahelian Desert, the destruction of the rainforest by logging interests and agriculture, and, most importantly, climate change.
Collective action refers to action taken together by a group of people whose goal is to enhance their condition and achieve a common objective. It is a term that has formulations and theories in many areas of the social sciences including psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science and economics. Researchers Martijn van Zomeren, Tom Postmes, and Russell Spears conducted a meta-analysis of over 180 studies of collective action, in an attempt to integrate three dominant socio-psychological perspectives explaining antecedent conditions to this phenomenon – injustice, efficacy, and identity.
Construction is one of the main drivers of global warming and of environmental and social damage. Yet, we need homes, schools. Suspending new building activity, with Lausanne as a case study, the stud
L'environnement construit sera exploré à travers sa performativité grâce aux perspectives offertes par les gender studies, queer theories, de/postcolonial studies et sociologie urbaine. Les discussion
Construction is one of the main drivers of global warming and of environmental and social damage. Yet, we need homes, schools. Suspending new building activity, with Lausanne as a case study, the stud