How Tragedy of the Commons Could Be Averted Based on Behavior
This article examines how behavior has an effect on the depletion of natural resources. When an individual overuses a common area out of self-interest instead of working collectively with the community, everyone is worse off as resources are depleted at an unsustainable rate. This is known as the “tragedy of the commons”. Tragedy of the commons can also be applied to more abstract ideas beyond land and natural resource usage. For example, resistance to antibiotics in microbes reflects the tragedy of the commons. Humans use antibiotics and overtime a resistance spreads that ultimately renders the antibiotics useless. In this case, the individuals using the antibiotic wanted to maximize their own gain, but lessened the communal value of the antibiotic as a result of their actions.
Researchers mentioned in this article looked at ways to avert the tragedy of the commons from taking place. They found that incentivizing cooperation among individuals in the community was the only possibility for averting tragedy of the commons. This relates to our class discussions of tragedy of the commons and solutions to this problem in regard to public ownership versus private ownership. It’s worth noting that the researchers’ solution would allow for the commons to remain public. We discussed in class that private ownership can often result in less efficient uses of an existing resource.
http://phys.org/news/2016-11-game-theory-tragedies-commons-averted.html