"I would have loved to do it, but..."

How many times have you mentally cursed your project team member for not putting in the required effort? And how many times has the feeling been mutual? Well, there is no end to this argument as “effort” in most of the cases is not directly observable.

In general we can say that free riding happens in groups due to the presence of people whose pay-off matrices look somewhat like this:

Hence (goof-off, goof-off) seems to be the Nash equilibrium in such a situation. How do projects get done then? I’d say that’s due to the presence of members whose pay-off matrix looks different from this perhaps because of behavioural reasons. Those persons would perhaps derive “utility” out of moral, responsible behavior. However, designing a free-riding proof system will have to concern with the “problem children”, not the ethically high people. The solutions will either have to increase the pay-off for working hard or decrease the pay-offs for goofing off. Both can be approached by steps taken at

1            1. The group level itself amongst the members

2            2. Institutionalizing some mechanisms

1.  At the group level, before every project meeting, each one can be asked to come prepared with a write-up covering the problem issues and suggested solutions. The meeting can then be used to discuss and filter solutions rather than briefing the unprepared ones by the prepared ones. This will also ensure some sort of a peer pressure for everyone to put in some work.  Is this step alone sufficient? Perhaps not.

Hence, we have to look at an agreed protocol for all group projects:

2. At the closure of every project, there should be a peer-review of every group member and the report confidentially submitted to the Professor. This process should be officially implemented at the institute level. More than the actual content of the peer-feedback and resultant grades, the fact that every member knows he is going to be individually appraised, will make him/her more productive.

This is of course only one possible theoretical solution. How it plays out in real life will have a lot of other direct and contextual variables moderating the situation.