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156 ANDRÁS TAKÁCS-SÁNTA
Laws, regulations and incentives provided
by the governmental system
Realizing the deterioration of the quality of the pasture, the mayor of the village
summoned the aldermen for an extraordinary meeting. The municipality decided to
put the pasture into municipal proprietorship and regulate the maximum number of
cows: nobody could drive more than two cows to the pasture. Breaching the limit would
entail serious sanctions ( large fines), to punish disobedient cattle farmers. The aldermen
also decided that they would offer tax allowances to villagers who changed over to
economic activities that did not depend on the commons — thereby trying to prevent
more people from entering animal husbandry.
Though at the beginning there was uproar and protests and several herdsmen tried
to dodge the regulations (at times successfully), the measures eventually proved successful.
Although nearly everyone experienced a decline in their financial standing, the farmers
and their families lived happily ever after for generations.
The diverse governing systems — at settlement, state or supranational (e.g. EU)
levels — may provide laws, regulations and incentives in order (1) to prevent the
activities of individuals, groups and organizations that are detrimental to the
environment and (2) to encourage them to pursue environment-friendly activities.
Today, all over the world countless institutions: laws, regulations and incentives
introduced by governing systems try to enhance ecological sustainability. The
decisive feature of these government measures are the efforts to get individuals
(groups, organizations) to adopt eco-friendly behavior in the interest of the public
good by making it the most advantageous behavioral alternative (financially or
otherwise) for them. In other words, the environment-friendly alternative will be
in harmony with their self-interest in the narrow sense and in the short run (note
that the cattle farmers in the tragic version of the tale also adopt this approach;
they do not display any sign of altruism). For example, the company which fixes
the filter on factory chimneys gets a tax allowance; those who do not comply with
the regulation get fines. In theory, that is, this method can result in environmentally
safe behavior even in the absence of any awareness of the environment’s needs. This
may be why it is perhaps the most popular of the four options all over the world.
Basically, this approach implies three difficulties. The chances are high that
environment-friendly behavior which is not internally motivated but rather imposed
on the actors by external constraints will not last long in democratic societies (and
the societies of at least the countries at the center are democratic at present), because
people tend to eliminate constraints. (For instance, in the next elections they may
vote out of office an environmentally sensitive political elite who have passed strict
laws in protection of the environment.) Secondly, the existence of laws is not
commons from diverse angles. I have adopted the psychological approach of Gardner and Stern
(2002), which focuses on how to change the behavior of the actors to be more eco-friendly. There
are other relevant psychological views as well (e.g. van Vugt 2009), while several others concentrate
on proprietary aspects instead of behavior, and try to look at possibilities for resolving the first
premise (e.g. Feeny et al. 1990). Other, more complex approaches characterize the results of various
disciplines in trying to find ways to avoid the tragedy (e.g. Ostrom 2009). Since I wanted to deal
with the possibilities of changing behavior, I looked for psychological approaches, out of which
Gardner and Stern’s work appeared most convincing.