ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at different types of social traps, and then narrow our focus to the most common type of trap, a resource dilemma. It discusses why people behave as they do in resource dilemma situations, and finally some techniques aimed at prolonging the life of the resource. A large portion of research on social traps, and resource dilemmas in particular, has been devoted to how to “solve” them, that is, to identify techniques or interventions that will maintain the pool near its original, or some other, long term level. D. M. Messick and his colleagues have studied in great detail how these factors affect one’s behavior in a social trap. Studies of structural alterations have mainly centered around two techniques: changing the methods by which group members choose their harvests and partitioning the resource. A more attempt to structurally alter the resource involves partitionment, the division of the resource into discrete units.
