Public Commitment Making as a Structural Solution in Social Dilemmas

Research shows that public commitment making helps promote pro-environmental behavior. However, not everyone may be willing to make such commitments. Therefore, it is important to investigate the conditions under which commitment making is likely to occur. We expected dispositional trust and situational expectations to determine the willingness to install a system of public commitments. Two studies are presented which show that group members low in dispositional trust (low trusters) are likely to choose for a public commitment system when their situational expectations concerning other group members’ contributions are high, while those high in dispositional trust (high trusters) are likely to choose for a public commitment system when their situational expectations concerning other group members’ contributions are low. It appears that for both low and high trusters the choice for a system of public commitments is instigated by a motivation to further the collective outcomes.