Action around climate change poses perhaps the most daunting collective action problem for the commons. The issue transcends institutional boundaries, cuts across all scales of analysis (individual, community, nation, globe), and poses free rider problems encompassing multiple generations. The literature has proposed a number of institutional pathways for engendering collective action, including state-centered, market-based, and communitarian modes of organization. These institutional models trigger collective action through mechanisms involving individual rationality, social pressure, reciprocity, and others. However, in recent years, there has emerged another, underutilized pathway for collective action –relationality. Through social networks, connections across individuals and groups bring about pro-environmental action through mechanisms involving cognitive and emotional pathways (e.g., feeling empathy, caring for others). We will review, first, the conceptual basis for the relational model of collective action and, secondly, present a number of case studies that provide evidence for its activation in situations surrounding the climate commons.
Related References:
Brugnach et al. (2021). Relational quality and uncertainty in common pool water management. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 15188.
Lejano,R. (2023). Caring, Empathy, and the Commons. Cambridge University Press.
Ortiz-Riomalo,J.F. et al. (2021). Inducing perspective-taking for prosocial behaviour in natural resource management. JEEM, 110, 102513.
