Selective Incentives

Abstract

Abstract Selective incentives are private goods made available to people on the basis of whether they contribute to a collective good. Selective incentives can either reward participants (or contributors) or punish nonparticipants. The concept of selective incentive is important for focusing attention on the factors besides the group goal that affect people's desire to participate in social movements. Selective incentives can be material, solidary, or purposive. The concept of selective incentive is embedded in a rational choice or cost/benefit approach and originates with Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective Action . Collective or public goods have the property of nonexcludability : if they are provided to any member of a group, they cannot be excluded from other group members. Nonexcludability can lead to the free rider problem or collective dilemma wherein rational individuals should prefer to let others pay for collective goods. “Only a separate and selective incentive will stimulate a rational individual in a latent group to act in a group‐oriented way … The incentive must be ‘selective’ so that those who do not … contribute to the attainment of the group's interest, can be treated differently from those who do” (Olson 1965: 51). Formal theorists since Olson have moved far beyond his original statement to show how the interplay between collective goods and selective incentives can produce complex and even surprising collective action dynamics.