Social Sciences and History / Unit 9 SSH 0824 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Free Riders and Three Incentives: Naming the Cure
The idea
The exam gives a group's device for recruiting members and asks what problem it solves and which incentive it is. The problem is collective action: people free ride, taking benefits without bearing costs, especially when they see their own participation as not critical. Leaders answer with incentives. Material incentives are substantive monetary or physical benefits. Solidary incentives rest on people's wish to associate with those like them. Purposive incentives appeal to support for the cause itself. Small, wealthy and well-organized groups overcome the problem more easily, and disturbance theory holds that an external event can mobilize a group.
In practice
Given "members receive a discount card and a magazine", material. Given "the chapter's monthly dinners keep the members coming", solidary. Given "she pays dues because she believes in the cause", purposive. Given "a new pipeline proposal produced a landowners' association overnight", disturbance theory. Given "he enjoys cleaner air without joining the clean-air group", the free rider. Ask what the member receives: a thing, company, or a cause.
Where people slip
The trap is calling every benefit material; the anchor limits material incentives to monetary or physical ones. The second trap is the free rider as a villain; the anchor treats free riding as rational when a public good will exist regardless.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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