Sharing Scarce Resources

Abstract

In Study I, groups of three subjects participated in a commons game in which they faced the dilemma ofhow to harvest resourcesfrom a shared, slowly regenerating pool so as to maximize their individual harvests without overexploiting the pool. In half the groups, individual subjects earned their own scores, but in the other half their scores were directly tied to (were equal shares of) the group's total score. Independently, one-third of the groups experienced an externally controlled "disaster" part way through the game in which their resource earnings to that point were abruptly cancelled. In another one-third of the groups this "disaster "happened only to a single member of the group. In the final (control) one-third, there was no disaster. Subjects in all conditions were given free opportunity both to act altruistically and to steal from their groupmates. Results showed that, overall, stealing was common and about five times as frequent as altruism. In groups in which members'scores were tied to the group's total score, however, groups made higher scores and showed more altruism and less stealing. It was discovered that, paradoxically, more stealing occurred in groups that did not experience ruin. Study II clarified this last finding, suggesting that stealing of the type allowed here was in fact functional in preserving the life of the commons, but not in improving members'scores. A tentative explanation is advanced identifying the experimentally created dilemma as a situation of conflicting rational ities.