Promoting Personal Decisions Supporting the Achievement of Risky Public Goods

Many societal problems are social dilemmas. Findings collected in the area of experimental games may be of relevance to people confronted with practical social dilemmas. In this chapter it is explained what social dilemmas are, and some examples of experimental social dilemmas are given. Thereafter, several findings collected in this area will be reported. Subsequently it will be shown that these findings have practical implications. Considerations of power and fairness appear to be important. The final part of the paper focusses explicitly on power and allocation processes. Practical implications for the management of social dilemmas in technological projects are discussed; they are summarized in a flowchart.