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Voluntary leaders show a way out of the policy paradox surrounding issues like climate change, new CU 羞羞视频 study finds

When it comes to dealing with environmental problems, early actions from leaders really do matter, according to new research from a team of researchers at the 羞羞视频.听

The study, , looked at the role that voluntary leaders (or those who become leaders because they want to help) play in local communities, and found that when they step forward and act unselfishly, they are more likely to mobilize support for environmental management from other members in their communities.

These findings, the researchers argue, not only answer the question of why local communities are so successful in governing their resources, but also demonstrates how unselfish leadership can help address a policy paradox that plagues institutions across the globe: how do you confront a creeping issue before it becomes a crisis?

鈥淥ur societies often fail to prioritize environmental protection, and we often do not take action until we find ourselves in the middle of an environmental crisis with fewer affordable policy options that can actually fix the problem,鈥� said Krister Andersson, a professor of political science at CU 羞羞视频 and the lead author on the paper.听

鈥淲e see a similar pattern for how we respond to other threats, like COVID, or things that we as a society haven鈥檛 really developed rule systems or policies for, you need to be able to mobilize broad societal support for what the response should be.鈥�

鈥淭he question, then, is what can leaders do to mobilize citizens to support effective measures?鈥� Andersson continued. 鈥淲e argue in the paper that at those early stages of trying to come up with effective responses to creeping problems 鈥� that unselfish leadership actions can make a difference for actually galvanizing and mobilizing people around specific policy responses.鈥澨�

Most researchers who study natural resource management agree that local communities are critical to the governance of shared resources, whether they be forests, ground water or fisheries. There鈥檚 less consensus, though, on why some local communities create very effective rule systems while many others do not.听

Environmental policy scholars often say local leadership can help community members, or resource users, self-organize, but researchers don鈥檛 know much about how particular leadership actions and strategies help users develop effective self-government.听

So, the researchers decided, why not look at these local leaders?

In particular, they looked at the role that voluntary leadership actions鈥攖he actions of those who take up the mantle of leadership even if they may not have been elected or put in a position of power鈥攑lays in these communities.

To observe leadership in action, the researchers created a game that mimics the tragedy-of-the-commons scenario. During the game, the researchers documented the participants鈥� behavior, including how much each participant harvested from the shared resource, who took the initiative to propose rules and strategies for the rest of the group, how much participants communicated with one another, and whether they ended up agreeing on any common rules.听

Analyzing these data, the team examined voluntary leadership actions in shared resource situations where there are no imposed rules but there is pressure to earn income. The researchers didn鈥檛 appoint a leader but let the users make their own decisions and keep tabs on each other.

The field assistants watched to see if anyone in the groups volunteered to be a leader and, if they did, whether that made a difference for agreeing on a common set of rules.

What they found is that, yes, it absolutely did, particularly when they led by example, making unselfish decisions on behalf of the community. In particular, this positive leadership effect was strongest when the shared resource was in a subtle decline, not when the resource was disappearing quickly or in real crisis.听

鈥淲e saw that when leaders behaved unselfishly as a response to the small, gradual decline in resources鈥攚hen they make unselfish, harvesting decisions and propose a course of action for the group鈥攖hen what we see in the next few rounds is much stronger agreement in the group around self-regulation, that many more group members are on board to self-regulate,鈥� said Andersson, who is also the director of the Center for the Governance of Natural Resources at the .

Although these findings pertain to shared natural resources, the results also have implications for many slow, creeping crises, such as climate change, where formal leaders, whether they be in governments or companies, may not be motivated to act and pass policies until it鈥檚 too late, the researchers say.

鈥淏y the time the crisis or a catastrophe hits and politicians are motivated to do something, we鈥檙e basically just responding, putting a Band-Aid on the symptoms. We鈥檙e not really dealing with the cause of those catastrophes,鈥� said Andersson.

鈥淭his research provides a possible exit sign out of the policy paradox. Perhaps unselfish leadership actions by informal leaders can provide a way out by mobilizing citizens to push for early action, before the problem has turned into a crisis.鈥�

The other authors on the paper are Kimberlee Chang and Adriana Molina-Garz贸n, both CU 羞羞视频 graduate students.