Public Goods and Church Games

I am researching the potential impact of insights from positive psychology on how we do stewardship in the church. In any voluntary organization, one issue is always the "Free Rider" dilemma. This dilemma is an example of the “Tragedy of the Commons.” Usually this behavior involves someone taking more of a limited commodity than would be regarded as a fair or equal share. However, it can also be described as the problem of taking advantage of a system without contributing to the long-term sustaining of that system. In the long run, the system will collapse under the weight of too many free riders. In the short run, however, the free riders will benefit from the virtues of the system without bearing any of the cost.

Dan Ariely describes a thought experiment he entitles “The Public Goods Game.” Four participants are given ten dollars each. They can each contribute as much of that ten dollars as they wish to a common fund. Each contribution will be completely private. The total amount in the common fund will then be doubled and split evenly among the participants. Obviously, the rational thing to do, in the long run, would be to give ten dollars and walk away with twenty. But what if someone “cheats” and gives less than ten dollars?[1] The other participants get less than they had hoped, and the “cheater” walks away the “winner.”

If the game continues for further rounds, the givers lose trust in the system. Eventually no one contributed anything, and no one loses anything. Game over.

This sounds painfully close to what giving feels like in church. The “cheater” is probably, to use Adam Grant’s terms, a Taker. No amount of preaching about the common good will reach someone who is wired as a Taker. The one solution to the problem of the Public Goods Game is to publish the gifts in advance. Takers are highly sensitive to the potential for social and reputational punishment in a system. Transparency in giving provides discipline for those who might wish to be “cheaters” in a system that is based on mutual trust and common good.

Of course, the Public Goods Game is driven explicitly by market norms rather than social norms. I wonder how the game would change if all the participants shared a set of group expectations about cooperation and mutual support. That might be closer to the ideal of the church most of our folks have in mind. So when the Public Goods Game happens in church, the scramble of market norms and social norms makes things messy. We have these ideal expectations based on social norms. Those expectations suggest that people will give cheerfully and responsibly. Some, however, will respond to their personal market norms and keep their money, time and energy to themselves. These takers will usually still expect to benefit from the ministries of the church at times of personal and family crisis, loss and grief, or life stage milestones like baptism, first communion, confirmation and marriage.

I wonder how this trust-eroding system impacts the cheerfulness of our givers. In the Public Goods Game, trust erodes very quickly. It doesn’t take long for all the participants to simply stop giving. While that doesn’t really happen in the church, I suspect that the phenomenon leads matchers, in particular, to carefully monitor how much they give—both in relationship to the overall budget and to what they perceive others are giving. Since about sixty percent of our congregation is made up of matchers, this has a major impact on the cheerfulness of our givers and their willingness to be generous.

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[1] Dan Ariely, Predictably Irrational, page 257ff.