https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4191-6969
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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.
Acknowlegdement
This research was supported through the Belmont Forum by the UK’s National Environment Research Council (NERC) [grant number NE/T013656/1], by the Research Council of Norway [project number 312046] and by the United States of America National Science Foundation/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration [grant 2028065].
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
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Notes on contributors
Luke J. Matthews
Luke J. Matthews is a Senior Behavioral Scientist at the RAND Corporation and a Professor of the Pardee RAND Graduate School. His research interests focus on how culture, including misinformation, constructs social networks and is constructed by them.
Aaron Clark-Ginsberg
Aaron Clark-Ginsberg is a social scientist at the RAND Corporation and a Professor of Policy Analysis at Pardee RAND Graduate School. Dr. Clark-Ginsberg has been researching disasters for more than 10 years, with a recent focus on three primary areas of inquiry: disasters and community, disasters and governance, and disasters and measurement. An applied researcher, most of Clark-Ginsberg’s work involves coproduction with policymakers and practitioners.
Michelle Scobie
Michelle Scobie, PhD, LLB, LEC, is a senior lecturer and researcher at the Institute of International Relations at The University of the West Indies (UWI), St. Augustine. She is a member of the Caribbean Studies Association, the University of the West Indies Oceans Governance Network, the Earth System Governance Global Research Alliance, the Future Earth Ocean Knowledge Action Network, the International Studies Association and the Scientific Advisory Committee- Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. She serves on several editorial boards. Her research areas include international law, international environmental law and developing states’ perspectives on global and regional environmental governance. Her recent book: Global Environmental Governance and Small States: Architectures and Agency in the Caribbean.
Laura E. R. Peters
Laura E. R. Peters is an interdisciplinary geographer and peace and conflict scholar whose research focuses on how deeply divided societies build knowledge about, cope with, and act upon contemporary social and environmental changes and challenges, including those related to climate change, disasters, and health.
Unni Gopinathan
Unni Gopinathan is a public health physician and senior researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. His current projects focus on institutions and processes that support the generation and use of evidence to inform health policy decisions, and the relationship between civil society involvement and evidence use during decision-making for universal health coverage. He has previously worked for the University of Oslo, the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).
Anuszka Mosurska
Anuszka Mosurska is a PhD researcher at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the intersection of disasters and humanitarianism in Indigenous contexts.
Katy Davis
Katy Davis is an interdisciplinary researcher working on issues of social and environmental justice and equity with a specific focus on disasters and community health.
Sonja Myhre
Sonja Myhre, PhD, MsPH: Sonja Myhre is a senior advisor in the global health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. She has a PhD in public health and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Stanford Center for Research in Disease Prevention. Her research focuses on public health communication, climate change and health, national public health institutes, maternal and child health, and data privacy.
Saskia Hirsch
Saskia Hirsch is an MSc student in Global Health and Development at University College London who strives to bridge science and society through her work on environment, health systems, and sustainability.
Eija Meriläinen
Eija Meriläinen's research centers on disasters and crises, from headline-making events to the impacts of everyday inequalities.
Ilan Kelman
Ilan Kelman http://www.ilankelman.org and Twitter/Instagram ILANKELMAN is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, integrating climate change into both.