Explaining the Bystander Effect?
The Bystander Effect refers to the phenomena that when there are more people in the crisis, the less willing people are to help. Basically, the effect of the presence of others in the situation changes a person’s willingness to help someone in distress. One would certainly think the opposite. Now, this “effect of the presence of others” can be triggered by different things. For instance, if a group of people see lots of people gathered at the scene of a crisis, they might assume each other is helping out, but then no one helps out… The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization explains the bystander effect through the Volunteer’s Dilemma.
Volunteer’s Dilemma argues that volunteers can all simultaneously choose to provide or not provide a public good. Volunteering to help would come at the cost of the volunteer, but would benefit everyone else. Think of a glorified Prisoner’s Dilemma. We can call one volunteer the first prisoner, while the rest of the volunteers represent the second prisoner. The two prisoners can present strategies of confessing/not confessing. Differently though, “in the only symmetric equilibrium [for the volunteer’s dilemma],the probability that each player volunteers decreases with group size”. Volunteer’s Dilemma argues and shows through game-theory, that the bigger the group of people, the less likely the people are willing to help.
Link: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268120304145#bib0022