The private solution trap in collective action problems across 34 nations

• DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/jr4km_v1
• Publication Date: 2025-03-21T23:22:30Z
• Authors: Eugene Malthouse; Charlie Pilgrim; Daniel Sgroi; Michela Accerenzi; Antonio Alfonso; Rana Umair Ashraf; Sanchayan Banerjee; Alexis Belianin; Syngjoo Choi; Gwen-Jiro Clochard; Eduardo Ezekiel D...; Giorgio Dini; Filippos Exadaktylos; Emel Filiz-Ozbay; Fabio Galeotti; Nobuyuki HANAKI; Lingbo Huang; Doruk Iris; Hubert Janos Kiss; Juliane Koch; Jaromír Kovářík; Martin Leites; Meike Morren; Laila Nockur; Mayada Oudah; Ali Ozkes; Lionel Page; Stefan Pfattheicher; Muhammad Ryan San...; Rene Schwaiger; Rostislav Staněk; Sarah Spycher; Alessandro Tavoni; Vera L. te Velde; Joseph Tao-yi Wang; Wei-Chien Weng; John Wooders; Thomas Hills
• Keywords: Trap (plumbing); Collective Action

Collective action problems emerge when individual incentives and group interests are misaligned, as in the case of climate change. Individuals involved these often considered to have two options: contribute towards public solutions such global mitigation or free ride. However, many collective today involve a third option investing ‘private solution’ local adaptation. Here we introduce game featuring private solutions, wealth inequality determined by luck merit, participants from 34 countries. We find that joint existence has consistent effect across countries: given higher choose solution almost twice those lower wealth, regardless source their proportionally less solutions. Wealth therefore increases every country with left unprotected. call this trap identify universal pathways help groups cultures avoid it: early contributions conditional cooperation. also beliefs about personal responsibility, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation cultural explanations preferences for Our findings highlight ubiquity trap, its underpinnings, potential consequences problems.