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Collective action by community groups: solutions for climate change or different players in the same game?

Matthews, Luke J; Clark-Ginsberg, Aaron; Scobie, Michelle; Peters, Laura ER; Gopinathan, Unni; Mosurska, Anuszka; Davis, Katy; ... Kelman, Ilan; + view all (2023) Collective action by community groups: solutions for climate change or different players in the same game? Climate and Development , 15 (8) pp. 679-691. 10.1080/17565529.2022.2149254. Green open access

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Abstract

Community groups are taking initiatives to adapt to a changing climate. These organizations differ from businesses and governments by being non-profit, often informal, resource limited, and reliant on volunteer labor. How these organizations facilitate collective action is not well known, especially since they do not necessarily solve common pool resource governance, but rather improve common pool resources through collective action. In fact, at first glance, community groups seem to not have the means for solving collective action problems used routinely in industry and government, such as paying people for cooperation or punishing them for lack of it. This article investigates how community groups solve collective action problems though data gathered across 25 organizations in three sites – Sitka, Alaska, USA; Toco, Trinidad; and a global site of distributed citizen science organizations. We found that community groups used positive reinforcement methods common to industry and used little punishment. Groups also engaged in mechanisms for collective action, such as relying on altruistic contributions by few individuals, that generally are not considered commonplace in businesses and governments. We conclude by discussing implications from this study for collective action theory and for how policymakers might learn from community groups to address climate change.

Type: Article
Title: Collective action by community groups: solutions for climate change or different players in the same game?
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2022.2149254
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1080/17565529.2022.2149254
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Keywords: Collective action, community resilience, prisoner’s dilemma, snowdrift, game theory, punishment, ethnicity, volunteerism, climate change adaptation
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Inst for Risk and Disaster Reduction
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10162250
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