College Apartment Decision-Making

It wasn't until this semester I realized how many times I have used collective action in my very own college apartment. Collective action is frequent amongst myself and my roommates: what type of barstools should we have? Is it time to replace the tiny, broken kitchen trashcan? As an individual, it is important to consider which of these decisions should require unanimity versus a simple majority agreement. For example, I let my roommates handle most of the decisions regarding living room decor. Why? Because the external cost of how my roommates decided to decorate were relatively low to me, whereas the decision making costs were relatively high. Here we used a simple majority method – we went with what my two roommates wanted since there were very low costs associated with their actions. On the other hand, when we were deciding how to divide rent we required unanimity; after all, the external cost of enduring a rent division you cannot afford greatly outweighs the decision making cost associated with bargaining. We may not always want to take the time to go through the bargaining process associated with unanimity (especially when splitting rent), but it comes in handy when you are able to eliminate large external costs.