10.5: Social Traps

Shortly after Hardin’s article was published, John Platt published another more general look at collective behaviour with undesirable results. He titled the article “Social traps,” defining the term as situations “where men or organizations get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out of or to avoid” (1973, p. 641). The common pattern here involves a lack of connection between the short-term or local effects of an action and its long-term, broad consequences. In much the way that a mouse falls victim to a trap due to its failure to look beyond the hunk of cheese toward the metal spring set to snap its spine, people often fail to look past immediate and local gain. Economist Robert Costanza has explored how these social traps work in the context of natural resources, and has identified several different types (1997), each of which will be discussed in turn.

Ignorance

The most straightforward of these traps is simple ignorance ^[5], and early fishers might very reasonably have pled ignorance regarding the effect that their actions would have on the fisheries that they caused to collapse. In modern times, however, the ignorance trap is more commonly associated with the broad or long-term effects of industrial chemicals. For example, when chlorofluorocarbons were developed in the early 1900s, they were celebrated because they were useful as a refrigerant, as well as non-flammable and non-toxic to humans and decades passed before scientists realized the damage CFCs were doing to the ozone layer. In the context of resource use, however, the ignorance trap is less relevant and in most cases, scientists can predict the scarcity of a resource long before it occurs. Other traps, on the other hand, are less easily dispelled than the ignorance trap.

Externality

Externality is an economic term, referring to a cost or benefit of an action that is not felt by the actor. For example, an individual living on a river might be inclined to view that river as a convenient tool for disposing of waste. One could simply dump their waste in the river, and need not worry about it anymore. However, the waste is not truly gone. The dumper may not experience the negative effects of the waste in the river, but people living downstream from the dumping will. The Mississippi River, which flows over 2,500 miles through much of the United States including several large farming states, provides a useful example of the effects of externality traps. Over its long course, the Mississippi picks up nutrient runoff (from excessive fertilizer use) and carries those nutrients downstream. By the time the waters reach the Gulf of Mexico, the nutrient levels are high enough to cause a dead zone roughly the size of New Jersey. The term dead zone refers to an area in which oxygen levels in the water are too low to support most marine life. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone, one of the biggest in the world, now encompasses what was once a habitat that supported a productive shrimp fishery.

The term externality indicates that the effects of an action are not accounted for within the marketplace. In theory, if Person A was dumping waste into a river and negatively affecting Person B downstream, then the two parties might reach an agreement by which Person A compensate Person B. In reality, however, such agreements are quite complicated due both to the number of people involved (e.g. thousands living along the Mississippi River and near the dead zone) and the difficulty in placing an economic value on the damage done to the resources in question.

In the Mississippi River example, environmental degradation in the form of the dead zone has, among other things, decreased the supply of a natural resource. In other words, the externality trap plays an indirect role in resource scarcity. But this trap can play a direct role as well. The most common type of example points to the disparity between the rich and the poor and the resulting disparity between their ability to respond to resource scarcity. Put simply, those with more resources are better able to respond to resource scarcity than those with fewer resources. Consider the rise in the average price of gasoline in the United States. In 1999 the average price per gallon was $1.34. By 2008, the average had increased to $3.01 per gallon. ^[6] While still relatively low by global comparisons, the steep price increase was a shock for many. Those individuals with more expendable income, however, were better able to either absorb the higher fuel costs or to purchase more fuel efficient cars. For those individuals without expendable income, these options were not available.

A similar pattern can be seen globally. Karen Lock and co-workers observe that, “Between January 2006 and July 2008, global food prices rose by an average of 75%, causing an estimated 75 million additional people to become undernourished worldwide” (Lock et al., 2009, p. 269). As one might imagine, the wealthy were not among the 75 million additional undernourished people. In fact one of the factors contributing to the increase in food prices is the shift in diet in nations with growing economies. New wealth in places such as Brazil, India and China has caused a shift from plant-based diets to ones based on meat and dairy products, more resource intensive food sources. As a result, the demand for grains increased to support the meat industry. While those individuals still depending directly on grains for their diet were not a part of this shift, they were still affected by increased grain prices. Approximately three billion people spend over half of their income on food. For these people, “any price increase will at best lead to poorer quality diets and, at worst, increase rates of malnutrition” (Lock et al., 2009, p. 270).

This discussion has focused on individual behaviour, but the same patterns hold at broader scales as well. Developing countries are more susceptible to the stresses brought on by resource scarcity than industrial countries (Jonsson et al., 2019). In fact, often the measures taken by the wealthy to adapt to scarcity exacerbate the problem for the poor. When the wealthy perceive an immanent scarcity of a resource, the common response is to increase one’s own stocks, meaning that even less of that resource is available for others. Anyone who has prepared for a hurricane has likely witnessed the mad rush for bottled water and plywood that takes place due to the fears of an impending shortage of these resources. The conflicts that take place at local hardware stores or supermarkets during those times point to the types of conflicts than can occur between classes and even countries in the face of resource scarcity. Such hoarding behaviour is deeply ingrained in human behaviour. We will discuss these dynamics later in the chapter. For now, we will continue with the survey of social traps.

Time Delay

To understand the next social trap, ask yourself which of these you would rather have: a one hundred dollar bill, or a check for one hundred dollars post-dated one year from today. You would likely prefer the cash. In fact, you can carry the exercise further and ask whether your answer would change if the check were for $105? How about $120? By identifying the exact amount that would lead you to choose the check, you can find what economists call your discount rate. That is, your level of preference for immediate benefits over future ones.

We have good reasons for preferring immediate benefits. First, we cannot know what is going to happen in a year. You might lose the check, or the account might be closed. The safer choice is to take the immediate gain. However, our penchant for immediate gains goes far beyond what is reasonable. Most of us exhibit behaviour that can be rationalized only because of the time delay between the behaviour and its consequences. For example, excessive drinking would likely not be nearly as widespread among college students if the hangover were felt immediately upon drinking alcohol rather than the next day. Procrastinating with homework so that an entire paper must be written in one stress-filled night is another example. The benefits of not doing the work in a timely fashion seem to trump the stress and potentially decreased quality of work that are bound to come from rushing at the last minute.

In terms of natural resources, the benefits we receive now from unsustainable use of resources today means that those resources will not be available tomorrow for use by us or by future generations. Consider for a moment the ethics involved in caring for future generations. Most would agree that one’s access to resources should not be dictated by one’s race or gender, and in the same vein one might argue that access to resources should not be based on what period in time a person is born. Sustainable use of resources implies an ethical responsibility (intergenerational justice) to ensure that future generations have access to the same quality of life that we have today. If we accept the argument by environmental scientists and ecological economists—that human innovation will not be able to substitute for all the services currently provided by our natural resources and environmental systems—then our commitment to future generations will require learning to live within the limits set by the Earth’s environmental systems.

The time-delay trap, however, often causes logic like this to land on deaf ears. We have heard the adages about taking precautions in order to avoid future hardship. A stitch in time saves nine. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Still, our preference for immediate payoffs causes us to ignore such wisdom, and blind faith in future technological solutions represents a convenient way to rationalize such behaviour. As a result, we tend to address environmental challenges only after they have reached catastrophic proportions. Strict environmental regulations are rarely enacted proactively. Rather, they come after a fishery has collapsed or the majority of an area has become deforested.

Some see this behaviour as having deep psychological roots and B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) tried to explain why people exhibit unsustainable behaviour by making the distinction between knowing by acquaintance (i.e. learning through our own experience) and knowing by description (i.e. learning through someone else’s advice). ^[7] The former is far more powerful, and since we cannot know the future through experience, we tend not to focus on it. This is particularly true when predictions—including sound, scientifically-based predictions—involve information that we do not want to hear.

Case Study 10.1

Fishing for Today, Not Tomorrow

A fishery is a renewable resource because the fish are able to replenish their numbers through reproduction. The rate of reproduction is dictated largely by the size of the population (Figure 10.2). When the population is relatively small, its growth rate is based on a percentage of its population. For example, a species might exhibit a growth rate of 10%, meaning that 100 individuals in the first year would grow to 110 individuals in the next, providing a net gain of ten individuals. A larger population, say 1000 individuals, would be able to produce a net gain of 100 individuals in that same period. In other words, the larger the population, the more individuals it is able to produce. This explains the shape of the left side of Figure 10.2. When a fish population is so large that its numbers are close to the maximum that can be supported by the environmental system, mortality increases due to lack of resources and the growth rate decreases as shown on the right side of Figure 10.2.

Figure 10.2: Population dynamics in fisheries.

Most commercial fisheries are currently on the left side of this graph, meaning that a reduction in population size decrease the amount of fish that can be sustainably taken the following year.^a Each year in which catch rates exceed sustainable limits further reduces the population’s ability to reproduce. If overfishing continues, then the population will eventually become too small to support any industry at all. Conversely, limiting current catch rates leads to greater sustainable catch rates in the future. Sustainable fishing requires restraint, taking fewer fish than we are able to take. However, as a result of the obstacles to sustainable behaviour discussed in this chapter, there is a strong tendency to catch fish at unsustainable rates, leaving little for future generations.

The UNFAO estimates that 52% of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited; 17% are over-exploited, meaning that the fish are being caught faster than they are reproducing; and seven percent are depleted, meaning that they can no longer support a commercial industry (FAO, 2006).

Psychologists use the term cognitive dissonance to explain the discomfort we feel when we hold contradicting beliefs (see Festinger, 1957). When we act in what we know to be an unsustainable manner, we may feel a sense of fear or guilt. To reduce the cognitive dissonance—and the accompanying emotional discomfort—we have two options: change the behaviour or change the belief that the behaviour is harmful to ourselves or others in the future. Often the first choice is taken, and people choose to behave in more sustainable ways (e.g. Aitken et al., 1994; Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). However, changing one’s beliefs to fit one’s unsustainable behaviour is not uncommon. We often seek information that supports our behaviour and dismiss information that does not (e.g. Stoll-Kleemann et al., 2001; Kilbourne & Pickett, 2008). Indeed, psychologists have shown that we will even change the way we perceive physical reality in order to reduce cognitive dissonance (Balcetis & Dunning, 2007). ^[8] Nonetheless, we shall see that this strong psychological focus on the present can be overcome under the right circumstances.