Educational responses to the
free rider and prisoner dilemma
problems
Gherardo Girardi
London Metropolitan University
Gian Lorenzo Preite
Good Works
Universities and Climate Change: the Role of Higher Education Institutions
in Addressing the Mitigation and Adaptation Challenges
Manchester Metropolitan University, 1 and 2 September 2016
Introduction
• Why are the free rider and prisoner dilemma
problems important?
• The role of the state in addressing these
problems
• Educational responses in a liberal education
context
– The free rider problem
– The prisoner dilemma problem
Why are these problems important?
• The free rider problem: someone may be inclined
not to take any action to protect the environment
as doing go is costly, instead he/she waits for
someone else to incur the cost, so as to enjoy the
cleaner the environment for free.
• If many people behave like this, it can paralyse
society and little or no activity to clean up the
environment will be undertaken.
• According to economic theory, the free rider
problem is pervasive. What does the evidence
say?
Why are these problems important?
• The prisoner’s dilemma: say there are two
countries. They both want to clean the air, but if
one does it alone, it loses economic
competitiveness in relation to the other. So
neither does anything. Again society can be
paralyzed.
• This problem is often blamed for stalled
international negotiations to address climate
change.
• The same problem applies where the players are
firms.
The role of the state in addressing
these problems
• The classic, economics textbook responses to
these problems is for the state to intervene to
tax free riders, and to co-ordinate activities of
agents in the prisoner dilemma problem.
• Recently, Nordhaus (2015) looks at forming
clubs of nations and penalizing those that
break the rules.
Educational responses in a liberal
education context
• The free rider problem:
– Increase perceived individual benefit of taking action by
• Informing about effects of climate change, deemed catastrophic by
the UN’s IPCC
• Informing people about the economics of happiness literature,
which downplays income as a determinant of happiness and
emphasizes social relationships (Bruni 2010)
• Encourage people to dwell upon their religion if they have one
(e.g. Pope Francis’ book Laudato Sí)
• Spend time in nature, exercising mindfulness (Kamitsis and Francis
2013)
– The above strategies also help promote a sense of civic
responsibility; this is also enhanced by educational
activities like service learning
Educational responses in a liberal
education context
– These strategies are particularly needed in economics
education, which has a materialistic bias; the same
can be said about society at large. Hence the
justification for practicing these strategies is that one
is correcting an information bias.
– Another justification is provided by George (1988);
here people (students) have (1st order) superficial
“preferences” of not wanting to bother with
protecting the environment, however at a deeper (2nd
order) level they wish they were more active, and the
aim of the educator is to foster the emergence of the
deeper level of preferences.
Educational responses in a liberal
education context
• The prisoner dilemma problem:
• In addition to enhancing the individual’s benefit
to take action, one may point to
– The growing body of lit showing that firms’ profits
tend not to decline as a result of taking eco-friendly
actions, in fact if anything they appear to rise (Khan et
al 2015)
– A recent report by Bassi and Duffy (August 2016)
showing that action taken to address climate change
is not expected to hurt UK economic competitiveness,
in fact it’s expected to enhance it in the long term.
Conclusion
• Recent empirical evidence provides excellent
material that can be used in class, and which can
be made known to the public at large, with a view
to addressing both the free rider problem and the
prisoner’s dilemma.
• Justifications for practicing eco-friendly
educational strategies in the context of a liberal
environment include correcting an information
bias and helping deeper preferences to emerge.
Key references
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bruni, L. (2010). The happiness of sociality. Economics and eudaimonia: A necessary
encounter. Rationality and society, 22(4), 383-406.
Bassi and Duffy, 2016, The impact of climate change policy on competitiveness, ESRC
George, David (1998) Coping rationally with unpreferred preferences, Eastern Economic
Journal, 24 (2), 181-194
Kamitsis, I., & Francis, A. J. (2013). Spirituality mediates the relationship between
engagement with nature and psychological wellbeing. Journal of Environmental Psychology,
36, 136-143.
Khan, M., Serafeim, G., & Yoon, A. (2015). Corporate sustainability: First evidence on
materiality. The Accounting Review. http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/corporate-sustainability-firstevidence-on-materiality
Nordhaus, W. (2015). Climate clubs: overcoming free-riding in international climate policy.
The American Economic Review, 105(4), 1339-1370.