Club Running: A Public Good?

The Running Club at UVA is up there as one of the most disliked clubs around grounds. We are the weirdos who live for the pain, jogging mile after mile in tank tops and short shorts. But, as a Club Running Economist, I was wondering: can the club be considered a public good? To be considered a pure public good, it must be both non-rival and non-excludable. For the purposes of this discussion, I will consider Club Running to be non-excludable, as it is in our Constitution that anyone can join us. By technicality, we could prevent someone from running with us, but to me that would be like forcing someone out of a public park.

The real question comes with non-rivalry. When more people run with us, does the utility of my run increase or decrease? Certainly, there are many social benefits involved with running as a group, such as group motivation and improved performance through competition. However, when the group size gets too large, I start to worry about tripping over someone else's legs, and it can be overwhelming to run with so many people you don't know. Thus, as n = 1 runners in the group begins to increase, initially my utility also increases (non-rivalry), however, as n continues to rise, my utility starts to decrease as I worry about falling. This ultimately means that with large groups, I enjoy my runs less. Because of this, it seems although at some points there is non-rivalry, I cannot consider Club Running to be a pure public good.