Resursdilemma

Book chapter, 2005

The chapter deals with people’s decision making in situations where there is a conflict between self-interest and a collective interest. In psychological research, such situations are referred to as social dilemmas. Resource dilemmas are one kind among several social dilemmas. First we describe what a social dilemma is, followed by a short historical review follows of people’s behavior in social dilem-mas. Thereafter, we focus on resource dilemmas since they are of specific interest given that several of our environmental problems in fact constitute resource di-lemmas. Finally, a short discussion on factors of importance for people’s behavior in resource dilemmas ends the chapter.