Abstract

Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare. Yet, public goods rely on cooperation which can break down because of free-riding incentives. Previous research extensively investigated how groups solve this free-rider problem but ignored another challenge to public goods provision. Namely, some individuals do not need public goods to solve the problems they share with others. We investigate how such self-reliance influences cooperation by confronting groups in a laboratory experiment with a safety problem that could be solved either cooperatively or individually. We show that self-reliance leads to a decline in cooperation. Moreover, asymmetries in self-reliance undermine social welfare and increase wealth inequality between group members. Less dependent group members often choose to solve the shared problem individually, while more dependent members frequently fail to solve the problem, leaving them increasingly poor. While self-reliance circumvents the free-rider problem, it complicates the governing of the commons.

Highlights

  • Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare

  • The problem is that public goods introduce a social dilemma: public goods rely on the willingness of each individual group member to contribute to their provision, while consumption is not restricted to those who contribute[4,7,8,9]

  • Previous research suggests that the availability of local group goods can reduce the provision of global public goods[23,24,25] but leaves open whether this is due to increased free-riding or a preference for self-reliance[22]

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Summary

Introduction

Humans establish public goods to provide for shared needs like safety or healthcare. Yet, public goods rely on cooperation which can break down because of free-riding incentives. Self-reliance is different from free-riding, since individuals solving a problem privately do not benefit from others’ efforts to solve the problem cooperatively It is unknown how groups solve shared problems when there is a division between those who can afford to be self-reliant and those who depend on public goods solutions. The public good is non-excludable: if created, the problem is solved for all group members (Fig. 1b) This means that it is preferable for any single group member if others pay the lion’s share of the cost, as this allows them to free-ride on the cooperation of others – the classic dilemma of cooperation with the inherent risk that the group fails to create a public solution and everybody loses

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