GEOG 2030 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Lobster Fishing, Collective Action, Montreal Protocol
9 May 2016
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Document Summary
What is common property: a resource which is shared and whose benefits accrue to many, (e. g. oceans, atmosphere, sidewalks) Hard to exclude people from accessing the resource: i. e. wild fish is common property, hard to stop someone from catching a wild fish (farmed fish is private property) Anonymity: hard to know who the violator is. Cost/benefit mismatch: person who gets the benefit only pays part of the cost while others pay the same costs but don"t get any benefit, e. g. Benefit of overharvesting fish accrues to an individual, but cost of declining stocks born by all: e. g. benefit of streaming a movie accrues to one individual, lower available bandwidth is shared amongst other users. The problem with common property: the free rider. Cost/benefit mismatch means that the temptation to cheat is high because the cheater gets the benefit of everyone else"s labour while doing less labour themselves: e. g. not abiding by an environmental regulation, e. g.
