Free-Riding in Multi-Issue Decisions

TL;DR

This paper investigates free-riding in multi-issue voting, revealing that while it is often possible due to fairness considerations, the associated risks reduce its attractiveness for voters.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical and experimental analysis of free-riding, showing conditions under which it occurs and assessing its risks in multi-issue voting.

Findings

Free-riding is often possible in multi-issue voting.

Weak fairness considerations enable free-riding.

The individual risk of free-riding deters its widespread use.

Abstract

Voting in multi-issue domains allows for compromise outcomes that satisfy all voters to some extent, but such fairness considerations open the possibility of a special form of manipulation: free-riding, where voters untruthfully oppose a popular opinion in one issue to receive increased consideration in other issues; we study under which conditions this is possible and show that even weak fairness considerations enable free-riding, and through computational and experimental analysis, we find that while free-riding in multi-issue domains is often possible, it comes at a non-negligible individual risk for voters, making its allure smaller than one could intuitively assume.