ABSTRACT
Voting has a lot of appeal in democratic societies, and in many states and provinces environmental referenda find their ways onto regularly scheduled ballots (e.g., “green” referenda in California). One of the advantages of voting is that it offers at least a partial offset to the free-riding behavior discussed as a very real problem in Chapter 9. Any individual voter will know that he or she will not have to pay for the environmental good unless the referendum passes; if that happens, that voter will know that everyone else will have to pay. This feature of voting is quite attractive.
