According to the tragedy of the commons theory, drinking

Question

According to the “tragedy of the commons” theory, drinking wells owned communally (i.e., freely usable by the public) will be used less prudently than personal drinking wells. Each drinker has incentives to deplete communal wells, because the water used would go to the individual drinker, while the detriments of overused wells’ reduced quality resulting from the depletion would be shared among all users. Yet a poll comparing 200 communal drinking wells with 400 personal drinking wells revealed that the communal wells were in better condition.

The answer to which of the following questions would be most useful in calculating the importance, with respect to the “commons” theory, of the poll?

A) Were both communal and personal wells used by any of the drinkers whose wells were polled?
B) Were communal wells usually preferred over personal wells for drinking among the drinkers whose wells were polled?
C) Before either was used for drinking, were the personal wells polled of comparable quality to the communal wells polled?
D) Were users of communal wells polled as wealthy as the users of personal wells?
E) Did any herd owners use only communal wells, and not personal wells, for watering their herds?

vjsharma25 · Answer

Is it C?

gmat1220 · Answer

Yeah its pretty straight. C is the answer. Since if we assume that water in personal wells is of better quality then the argument will not make any sense and theory will fail.

vivesomnium · Answer

I also think that the answer should be C. The theory is talking or the use of wells in prudent manner- in other words the behavior of drinkers towards wells, which results in the quality of well being good or bad.
If you have to check behavior of dinkers or way of using the wells from the quality of wells used, it is a must that at the starting point the quality is same- only then we can say that whether the use was prudent or not.

subhashghosh · Answer

I too think the answer is C using the Variance Test from Powerscore CR Bible.

IEsailor · Answer

Spot on guys !!! C it is

amit2k9 · Answer

clean C here,where prior condition of the wells need to be known.

puneetj · Answer

Narrowed it down to C and B....then chose C..

ashkanator · Answer

C is the only one that passes the yes/no test

nishtil · Answer

C should be the answer

According to the tragedy of the commons theory, drinking

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