Perceptions of Collective Action, Conditional Cooperation and Policy Preferences

• In Event: Public Opinion, Collective Action, and Climate Change

Abstract

Social dilemmas, in which short-term self-interests conflict with longer-term collective interests, often characterize today’s important policy challenges like climate change mitigation. Solving these types of dilemmas requires collective action. But if individuals are unable to cooperate voluntarily on their own, government intervention may be needed to enforce action through government mandates. When will people support government mandates? Two distinct motives underlie people’s engagement in collective action and shape policy preferences: the motive to promote cooperation and the motive to punish free-riders. Additionally, does it matter whether others are voluntarily engaging in the needed behavior? One possibility is that if many people are cooperating, then there is less need for the government to enforce cooperation. Thus, people will not support government intervention because it’s not needed. Alternatively, as more people are voluntarily cooperating, opportunistic behavior becomes more attractive. Therefore people may support government intervention to punish free-riders who engage in opportunistic behavior. In this paper, we argue that the salience of opportunistic behavior will determine the strength of each motive when there are other voluntary cooperators. To test our claim, we design an online survey experiment where we randomize both the salience of opportunistic behavior as well as the prevalence of voluntary cooperators.

Authors

• Pei-Hsun Hsieh, University of Pennsylvania

• Daniella Alva, Lehigh University

• Shawn Kim, Stony Brook University