Social dilemma

A situation in which individually rational choices can produce an outcome worse for everyone. Its defining tension is between incentives for individuals and outcomes preferred collectively.

Prisoner's dilemma: A game in which two players gain from mutual cooperation but each has an incentive to defect. It isolates the conflict between individual advantage and collective benefit in a two-person model.
Tragedy of the commons: The depletion of a shared, rival resource when individuals act in their own interest. It shows a social dilemma unfolding through overuse of a common resource.
Elinor Ostrom: An American political economist whose research showed how communities govern shared resources. Her work documented durable ways communities overcome commons dilemmas without relying only on privatization or central control.
Coordination game: A game in which players benefit from choosing strategies that match, though they may disagree about which match to choose. Unlike many social dilemmas, coordination can benefit everyone once expectations align.
Public goods game: A game in which participants can contribute to a shared benefit while keeping resources for themselves. It models how free-riding can undermine a benefit everyone could share.
Commons dilemma: A conflict in which people benefit individually from using a shared resource but collectively risk depleting it. This formulation makes the resource-use structure of the dilemma explicit.
Common-pool resource: A resource from which exclusion is difficult and one person's use reduces what remains for others. These resources are especially vulnerable to the incentives behind social dilemmas.
Zero-sum game: A game in which one player's gain is exactly balanced by another player's loss. Social dilemmas often permit mutual gains through cooperation, unlike strictly zero-sum conflict.
Free-rider problem: A problem in which people benefit from a shared good without contributing to its provision. The incentive to enjoy the good without paying its costs drives many social dilemmas.
Volunteer’s dilemma: A game in which a group needs at least one person to bear a cost for everyone's benefit. It captures the opposite pressure: everyone hopes someone else will act.

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