![]() ![]() Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others’ compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. Because it can lead to the opposite result," he added.Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. "However, I think many swing voters are those who want the PAP to govern, but vote for the opposition instead. Opposition voters who actually want the PAP to govern pay a smaller cost compared with those who want the PAP to govern and voted for them, he added.īut he noted that it is not free riding if people who voted for opposition do, in fact, want them to govern. Noting that the key is underpaying with respect to others, he said that for the majority, the costs comes in the possibility that there are no elected opposition MPs.īut many vote for the PAP because they consider the cost of not having the PAP governing to be even higher, he said. In another Facebook post the same day, Mr Cheng, seemingly in response to Mr Lim's post, said it was wrong to say that just because there are costs, there is no free-rider problem. It is definitely not an insult," he added. "It has nothing to do with riding, and nothing to do with being a free-loader. ![]() But if everyone thinks like this, then the streets will become dirty," he posted.įree riding leads to failure as the result is now opposite to the one that was intended, he said. But if one of us decides to litter, we think it won't matter because everyone else is not littering. Some observers wondered if the term free rider was being conflated with free loader, and that the difference between the two may not be clear to most Singaporeans when listening to the debate.Īmong them was former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng, who in a Facebook post on Thursday, gave an example of a free rider in social sciences. Residents were willing to do so, he added, and they had not voted tactically for the WP hoping that the PAP would still form the government. He added that the votes in the three WP constituencies were "potentially costly" and required residents to trust that candidates would become good town councillors and MPs. ![]() He said that Parliament seats are excludable and "when a PAP MP is elected, the opposition is necessarily prevented from accessing it". Shortly after the exchange in Parliament, MP Jamus Lim, an economics professor and WP MP in Sengkang GRC, weighed in on Facebook, saying the actions of WP voters did not strike him as free riding. He stressed that they should vote because they truly support the party, whether PAP or opposition, and not because they want "the best of both worlds". PM Lee, in a Facebook post on Wednesday night, reiterated his points on the mindset Singaporeans should have in elections. Some also felt that it was not the right time for politicians to engage in an "us versus them" debate. While some social media users said it was not fair to point fingers at Singaporeans for voting tactically and there was nothing wrong in doing so, others felt that it would be a risk to game the system. The term "free rider" is often used in economics to refer to a person or group who wants to enjoy a benefit without having to pay the fair or full cost.įree riding is seen more commonly with public goods and services, where the benefits are non-excludable - everyone stands to benefit and no one can be stopped from doing so. A thread on online discussion site Reddit also attracted over 270 comments in a day. Within a day, hundreds left comments on Facebook posts by politicians and observers who shared their take on the issue. The exchange sparked some discussions on various platforms online. ![]()
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