Relational Rewards and Communicative Planning: Understanding Actor Motivation

This article uses a collective action approach to analyse the risk of social dilemmas in communicative planning processes. If actors are self-interested and lack a predisposition to co-operation and communication, they may choose to free ride or under-contribute to the non-excludable outputs of voluntary communicative planning processes that lack reprisals for defection or under-contribution. To motivate their participation, actors must expect some exclusive additional reward. This analysis leads to a suggestion that communicative planning may create social capital networks that offer valuable relational rewards, in varying amounts, to some or all interdependent stakeholders. The value of relational rewards is their potential to reduce transaction costs in future collective actions. The expectation of relational rewards may be a selective incentive powerful enough to counteract the social dilemmas inherent in communicative planning processes in pursuit of normative goals such as inclusive-ness and diversity. However, the existence of relational rewards may facilitate strategic action as much as communicative action.