Whether it’s chatting in the break room, hitting the trails, or sharing thoughts on Yelp, some folks make an effort to make things better. Then some don’t pitch in at all.

New research from the University of California, Davis, looked into encouraging people to contribute to a virtual public good. Think of it like a simulated online rating system for a ferry service. Turns out, when you reward folks for chipping in, it not only makes the ratings more accurate but also boosts the overall quality of that virtual space.

Working together

The study involved over 500 people from around the world, and the team behind it brought together experts in communication science, sociology, computer science, psychology, and animal behavior. They wanted to understand how people work together, and it turns out, a little reward can go a long way in making things better.

“When you have a collective action problem, you either want to prevent a bad thing from happening or you want to harness all this energy to make a good thing happen,” the researchers explain.

The researchers created a 3D virtual world where players had a set time to gather coins on tropical islands. In this game, ferries zipped players between islands, each moving at its own speed.

They also added a rating system. Players could rate the ferries to guide others in picking the fastest one. These ratings were out there for everyone to see. Some players got into it, rating most or all the ferries, and doing their part for the group. Others, not so much—they barely rated any.

Learning over time

“You just have to learn over time by exploring and testing which ones are best,” the researchers explain. “We made that a collective effort by letting people leave ratings so other people can learn quickly which ferry would be their best choice.”

In this game, the public good was all about the ferry ratings. But the behaviors we see in the game mirror real-life situations, affecting things like online ratings, how we manage forests, and even our approach to climate change. Giving ratings in the game was seen as a team effort, a pro-social act benefiting everyone.

Now, there’s a hurdle in keeping this public good going—free riders. These are folks who enjoy the benefits but don’t chip in. You see this in real life, like people who don’t bother leaving reviews on Yelp. In the virtual world of this study, not everyone bothered rating ferries either.

But, here’s the interesting part. When players got coins for giving ratings, the number of players leaving ratings shot up from 35% to 70%. Those free riders, when given an incentive, actually gave better and more balanced ratings. It turns out, players who were giving ratings just because tended to rate the ferries way better than they were.

“It’s a cruel irony that the folks least likely to participate for the collective good are the ones we most need due to their superior skills,” the researchers conclude.