How long-distance friendships help – or sometimes hinder – collective action

Pressing issues of the 21st century are largely collective action problems, from climate change to migration to sustainability. The more people are involved in collective action, the harder it is -- and sustainable management of large natural resources, like fisheries and forests, is no exception. How do long-distance relationships -- ties that cut across community and often identity group boundaries -- help or hurt collective action to manage large natural resources? As we highlight in a brief review, long-distance relationships can hurt resource management by increasing overharvesting, but help it by fostering interdependence and idea sharing. In Tanga, Tanzania, where we direct the Tanga Sociality and Fisheries Project, long-distance friendships are characterized by helping -- especially by big gifts and loans, often key to business. We find that long-distance friendships predict higher levels of participation in fisheries management activities, while short-distance friendships and long-distance family ties don't have the same effect. Further, wanting long-distance friendships, even if one can't form them, may impact behavior. We share suggestive data from Tanzania and the US showing that long-distance orientation is a distinct construct from personality factors like Openness and Extraversion, and, unsurprisingly, predicts having more long-distance relationships. We close by discussing next steps in our collective action research.
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