Imagine that you’re a long-term resident of Killarney, a small town in an area of outstanding natural beauty in the Republic of Ireland. In recent years you’ve seen an increase in the number of tourists visiting. And an equivalent increase in the amount of rubbish littered across your streets and the nearby national park.
The main culprit is clear: disposable coffee cups. At first glance, therefore, the solution might be equally clear: ask the cafés to stop giving them out to customers.
But while each café might agree in principle, they are unlikely to agree in practice. Why? “Because we will lose too many customers to other outlets,” they might say. “We can’t afford it.”
What this means is that there is a conflict between what everyone in the town would collectively like (clean streets) and what each café would individually like (revenue from serving coffee). This situation is one that researchers call a collective action problem.
For many years, economists had clear predictions about long-term outcomes in these situations. They suggested that collective goals were extremely difficult to achieve precisely because everyone benefits from them, regardless of whether or not they have contributed towards bringing them about. And so, in the long run, no ‘rational’ individual would bother contributing. This is known as the free-rider problem.
In reality, one of the most robust findings from collective action research in recent years is that people generally respond to these situations in one of three ways. While some do free-ride, and some unconditionally contribute to the common good, most people are conditional cooperators – they are happy to contribute on the condition that others do the same.
It turns out that this insight is exactly what made it possible for Killarney’s residents to solve their coffee cup collective action problem. Together, they set up a scheme in which all outlets would provide the same reusable cups to customers in return for a deposit that could be reclaimed by returning the cup to any participating outlet.
For many of Killarney’s cafés, joining the scheme involved some training and equipment costs. But, being conditional cooperators, they were happy to absorb these costs because others were doing the same.
As it stands, almost every café in the town participates in the scheme, meaning they no longer provide disposable cups. The town’s litter problems have been greatly reduced.
There are several other insights that helped to make the Killarney scheme a success, many of which are highlighted in this recent report published by the Environmental Protection Agency in the Republic of Ireland. And there are several other places in the UK that have set up similar reusable coffee cup schemes, from Bristol to the University of Sussex.
So when faced with a collective action problem we should remember that most people are conditional cooperators. But we should also remember the unconditional cooperators who contribute towards the common good because they believe it is the right thing to do. To solve many collective action problems, we need both.
