Editing Free-rider problem (section)

=== Social norms ===
Psychologically, people are only fundamentally considered free-riders by others when they take benefits and withhold contributions. Although free-riders are recognised in all cultures, the degree of tolerance they experience and methods of dealing with them vary due to cultural differences.<ref>Delton, A., Cosmides, L., Guemo, M., Robertson, T., & Tooby, J. (2012) The Psychosemantics of Free Riding: Dissecting the Architecture of a Moral Concept. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (6), 1252-1270</ref> The impact of [[social norm]]s on free-riding differs between cultural contexts, which may lead to a variance between results in research on free-riding when applied cross-culturally. However, the impact of social norms on privately- and voluntarily-provided public goods is considered to have some level of effect on free-riding in many contexts. For example, social sanctioning is a norm in and of itself that has a high degree of universality.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Vyrastekova |first1=Jana |last2=Funaki |first2=Yukihiko |last3=Takeuchi |first3=Ai |title=Sanctioning as a social norm: Expectations of non-strategic sanctioning in public goods game experiment |journal=The Journal of Socio-Economics |volume=40 |issue=6 |pages=919–928 |date=2011 |doi=10.1016/j.socec.2011.08.020|hdl=2066/95402 |hdl-access=free }}</ref> The goal of much research on the topic of social sanctioning and its effect on free-riding is to explain the altruistic motivation that is observed in various societies.

Free-riding is often thought of only in terms of positive and negative externalities felt by the public. The impact of social norms on actions and motivations related to [[altruism]] are often underestimated in economic solutions and the models from which they are derived.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hustinx |first1=Lesley |last2=Cnaan |first2=R. A. |last3=Handy |first3=F. |title=Navigating theories of volunteering: A hybrid map for a complex phenomenon |journal=Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour |date=2010 |volume=40 |issue=4 |pages=410–434 |doi=10.1111/j.1468-5914.2010.00439.x|url=https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/1100542 |hdl=1854/LU-1100542 |hdl-access=free }}</ref>