You might believe you’re different and unique, a special human, different than the rest of the society. It's true in a way, we’re all different, but believe me, in many things we are still the same old docile human beings we were used to be! In our nature, we’re self-focused and emotional individuals focusing on what we believe to be the best for ourselves in life. That has eventually always been the best way for us as humans to survive, isn't it? How do you make your decisions on Steemit, is your vote-up always based on a well-supported intention or is it based on your human intuition? Behavioural Economics connects the way we think with certain decisions we make in life. It can be used to explain not only the economic decisions, but any decision we make… My name is Chris, a dutch student Economics and Policy and today I will contribute by giving you some confronting insights in the human mind underlying YOUR BEHAVIOUR!

Indonesian Fishermen: fishing rod or dynamite?

During my bachelor thesis, I’ve focused on the decision-making of Indonesian fishermen whether to use dynamite fishing or to contribute to the community by using sustainable fishing methods instead. Dynamite fishing is way more profitable but results into long-term economic and biological problems in the community. Coral reef degradation, decreasing fish stocks and the loss of tourist potential have long-term impacts on incomes of local inhabitants. Sustainable fishing on the other side, could be an optimal solution to the community (long-term sustainable incomes and environment), but this is not the best for the individual (dynamite fishing is way more profitable). A lot of fishers still use dynamite fishing and I wanted to find out what human reasoning underlies their decision to do so.

My main findings were that Indonesian fishermen base their decision on:

1. The fishing methods used by other fishermen in the community:

"if others would contribute, so would I, but if nobody stops dynamite fishing, I won’t either because I will still suffer the the community's economic and biological problems (minus happiness and minus incomes). Also, I will have a lower income because when I'd the less efficient sustainable fishing method."

2. The expected pay-off from a certain fishing method: there’s a threshold between sustainability and contributing to the community (increase happiness and satisfaction) and the money to give up.

3. Happiness and satisfaction they expect to get from their decision (fishing method): the personal value of the environment, satisfaction from being loyal to the community and pain or happiness from income loss/gains.

And most of us are like these fishermen. We believe money does make us happy because it allows us to feed ourselves, buy nice house or do fun activities. We’re utility and profit-maximizing individuals and our decisions often depend on what we believe to make us feel happy and satisfied. Which of these two is focuses is emphasized by you?

To Vote Up or to Not Vote Up?

In this post, I’ll focus on the decision you daily face on Steemit. The decision to: 1. vote up or 2. not vote up. In our “normal life”, our decisions are often limited by money. On Steemit, we’re limited by the amount of time and effective votes: our votes temporarily lose power (and potential payoff) as we keep voting up in a short time.

Utility Theory - Utility or Profit?

The Utility Theory states that people are self-focused beings that seek their way to maximize the utility (happiness) that follows from the decisions they make. Even when we give someone a compliment, contribute by doing volunteer work or give someone a present because it’s his or her birthday, we expect a certain payoff. We often do this because we might feel bad if we don’t or we expect to be appreciated if we do so. Our decisions are based on utility from satisfaction, feelings of happiness and appreciation. It makes you feel better and increases your utility.

Do you believe your voting is based on your utility- or profit-maximizing mind? I wonder, have you ever voted up a post with over 500 up-votes without even reading it? I believe you did. We often intend to follow the group as our human instinct tells us to be part of the group. But how do you feel about it? Does giving that 800th vote result into happiness and satisfaction or is it purely based on intuition and your profit-maximizing mind? Wouldn’t you feel a lot better if you vote up a post basing your decision on the quality, effort and support to newcomers? I’m not saying that popular posts aren’t qualitative, I actually believe they are, but I do believe that many upvotes still lack supported underlying reasons. Our profit-maximizing mind might still be predominant.

Money is happiness?

Strongly related to utility, is that profit-maximizing mind. We believe ourselves to be happier with an higher profit. Money is happiness! Yeah right.... The Game Theory approaches decision-making as a game where your decisions are based on your expected payoff and that expected payoff is based on your expectations of what others will do. And if we approach the upvote/not-upvote case from a very economic profit-maximizing perspective, you logically base the expected actions of other Steemers on:
1. The cash rewards of previous posts of this author (the author's popularity)
2. Whether other people will enjoy reading this post (blog post quality)
3. The current amount of upvotes on the post. In case more people have upvoted before you: low payoff

Unconsciously your profit-maximizing mind might be confronted with the following Game Theory payoff-matrix:

Seen from the profit-maximizing Game Theoretical perspective, our dominant strategies are the marked ones in the pay-off matrix. When profit-maximizing, we mainly focus on ending up in the situation where others vote up and you will too, whether it's quality or not, profit is still prioritized in this case. We also end up in situations where we don't vote up because we think others won't. We don't want to spend our votes on posts that won't generate profit, right?

Conclusion

These theories provide statements and assumptions to explain our human behaviour. It also explains why our community is a reflection of today’s human society. The Utility theory provides insights on how we tend to make decisions taken our economic rationality and the emotional utility-maximizing mind into account to. Acknowledging this information, should we change our behaviour? That’s dependent on you! What makes you happy? Is your main goal to make money or to make this Community valuable and take the profit for granted? Are you basing the blogs you read and the votes you 'spend' on the quality and entertainment of posts or do you simply stick to the trending posts and follow the rest of the Steemit Community? I believe these are things we should question ourselves. Are you the Indonesian dynamite fisher focusing on individual profits or the sustainable fisher who focuses on what's good for everyone and the the long-term situation of the community? That choice is up to you!

I’m wondering, where do you believe your decisions are based on? Discussion time!

Also check out previous related blog posts:
Future of The Steemit Society, Will Steemit Become a Worse or Better Reflection of Today's World Society? Click here
The Growing Pile of Stinky Steemshit: How to not contribute to that! [STEEMSHIT EXCLUSIVE] Click here

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#decision-science #psychology #steemit #steem #life