Various psychological motivational theories offer explanations as to why individuals might join commons initiatives. Among the most familiar are Norm Activation Model (NAM), Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory, Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB), Social Cognitive Theory, Social Identity Approach (SIA), and Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Actions (SIMPEA).

The Norm Activation Model (NAM) contends that when individuals are aware of the effects of destructive behaviour, they develop a sense of responsibility (a personal norm) to counteract the adverse consequences (Savari et al., 2023; Schwartz, 1977; Schwartz, 1994). Applied to the context of commons, this would mean that individuals join commons when they feel morally obligated to do so, for example driven by a pro-environmental personal norm. Personal norms are activated by awareness of adverse consequences and aspiration to responsibility. For example, individuals may be aware of issues that threaten the use of the commons, such as enclosure or access restrictions, and believe that by joining a commons initiative, they can help to improve the situation. Also, individuals who feel morally obligated to protect the environment and believe that communing will lead to the desired consequences may join commons to align with their moral values.

The Value-Belief-Norm (VBN) theory (Stern et al., 1995) is an extension of the NAM. The VBN theory suggests that individuals’ values, beliefs, and norms can lead to pro-environmental behaviours, such as preserving and protecting the environment. Strong pro-environmental values and beliefs increase people’s motivations to act responsibly, as their actions align with their values and norms. In the context of commons, this means that values, beliefs, and norms can motivate individuals to engage in commons initiatives.

The Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) emphasizes the role of subjective norms, attitudes, and perceived behavioural control in shaping behavioural intentions (Ajzen, 1991). The TPB defines human activity, especially in terms of decision-making and goal-directed action. It contends that a person’s behavioural intentions are influenced by their attitudes, subjective social norms, and perceptions of behavioural control. Thus, positive attitudes towards common outcomes, the belief in approval from close friends, and the capacity to be part of a commons can influence behaviour intentions in commons contexts.

The Social Cognitive Theory states that perceived self-efficacy both influences and is impacted by behaviour and circumstances (Bandura, 2002). A person’s self-efficacy is their conviction that they can carry out a specific activity effectively (Schunk, 2012). Three factors contribute to self-efficacy: magnitude, which refers to the subjective difficulty of achieving a goal; strength, which refers to the extent to which what is desired is generalized across contexts; and how generalized the goal is. The perception, motivation, and performance of an individual are all influenced by their feeling of capacity (Bandura, 2002). People seldom try to complete a task when they anticipate failing at it. Thus, individuals might join a commons initiative because they expect it to succeed.

The Social Identity Approach (SIA) highlights the significance of group identity and identification in shaping individuals' attitudes and behaviours (Brügger et al., 2020), emphasizing that people derive a sense of self and understanding of their social environment from their group affiliations. It posits that group identification, reflecting emotional and cognitive alignment with a social group, plays a crucial role in influencing collective efficacy beliefs and interpersonal behaviours. Ingroup favouritism can foster positive attitudes and actions towards group members, while outgroup animosity may lead to negative attitudes and discriminatory behaviours towards those outside the identified group. SIA suggests that people engage in commons initiatives due to the sense of belonging they anticipate, with those with a stronger need for belonging being more motivated. Group-based motivation helps to promote a feeling of shared purpose, collective efficacy beliefs, and common responsibility for the community’s well-being.

Finally, an extension of the social-identity-based collective action is the Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Actions (SIMPEA) (Fritsche et al., 2018). SIMPEA is a social identity model that explains individualistic models of pro-environmental action by considering collective self-definition effects on environmental appraisals and responses. SIMPEA suggests that decisions made under the influence of social identity are no longer personal but depend on collective perceptions and dynamics. The model suggests that social identity may provide a unique route to motivated pro-environmental action.

The various theories suggest that the motivation (whether normative, self-interest, or group-related) to join a commons initiative fosters, supports, or strengthens actual participation. The presented theories all recognize that psychological elements have an impact on how people make decisions and behave (see Fooken & Schaffner, 2016), be it through intimate values and norms in NAM and VBN; self-interest related motives such as attitudes, subjective social norms, and perceived behavioural control in TPB; self-efficacy in Social Cognitive Theory; or group-based motives such as social identity and collective efficacy in SIMPEA, or affiliation to groups in SIA and SIMPEA. Taken together, these models of motivations suggest that participation in commons can theoretically originate from a range of motivations, both on the individual and group level. However, to our knowledge, there is no overview of which of these motivations are tested empirically and whether specific motivations explain engagement in commons particularly well.

Our study is based on a scoping review of secondary data, i.e., published literature in academic journals and conference papers that were examined against the research questions. The study did not aim to undertake an exhaustive systematic review but instead adopted the criteria of Munn et al. (2022), focusing on a scoping review approach. Scoping reviews help synthesize data (Munn et al., 2022) that could inform practice, and guide future research priorities. To achieve the aim of a scoping review, we followed the procedure outlined by Peters et al. (2020), the intention was to identify and map the breadth of evidence at the intersection of psychological theories and commons research, recognizing a scoping review as a suitable method for uncovering research gaps in this combined domain.

We first conducted a literature search on motivational theories and empirical works that focused on individual and group motives for joining self-organized initiatives. We then linked the theories and the empirical works, although we did not conduct a detailed analysis of how the identified theories can be applied to the empirical works.

To retrieve the relevant literature, different perspectives and contexts were purposefully gathered to widen the lens of the review. A Boolean search methodology was used to extract scholarly articles/grey literature to analyse and develop a comprehensive understanding of the sociodemographic characteristics and of individual and group motivations to join a particular commons initiative. All the key phrases were paired with Boolean operators, such as “AND,” “OR”, and “NOT.”

The key phrases were “demographic”, “socio-economic demographic”, “motivation”, “individual motivation”, “group motivation”, “commons”, “urban commons”, “commoning”, “community-based initiative”, “grassroots initiative”, and “cooperatives”. The study relied on clear inclusion and exclusion criteria (see Table 1) to ensure that the study focuses on the sociodemographic characteristics of individuals and on group motivations to join a commons initiative.

Considering the complex body of transdisciplinary papers and the vast breadth and depth of literature on theories and empirical data on motivations to join commons, we narrowed the search down to titles and abstracts to enhance search specificity (see Gusenbauer & Haddaway, 2020).

The papers were screened in two stages. The first stage consisted of screening the title and abstract and was intentionally inclusive, retaining articles if they mentioned: (i) motivational theories for joining commons initiatives, or (ii) socioeconomic characteristics of commoners, or if they reported (iii) their own findings as to why individuals join commons. In the second stage, we applied tighter restrictions by reading full texts, and we included papers that focused on commons initiatives that fit our definition. We did not engage in risk of bias assessment, as the aim was to map the existing data (Peters et al., 2020).

The inclusion criteria allowed the review to focus on papers published on commons without date restrictions. Including countries from the Global North and South widened the geographical and analytical scope of the study and enabled us to reveal a diversity of commoning cases. The key phrases were applied to Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, and Google Scholar (grey literature) in June 2023. The search phrases were the same across the search engines. The scoping review focused on peer-reviewed articles, conference papers, review papers, and grey literature, based on the key phrases mentioned earlier.

A total of 1572 items fit the criteria. By removing duplicates across the search engines, we reduced the list to 1306 items. Next, 1165 items were eliminated because their abstracts or titles did not present theories or empirical data to answer our research questions. The first author manually screened all titles and abstracts without using AI tools. The first author read the 81 papers and eliminated them from the study as they had no association with the commons. The second, third and fourth authors verified this. Ultimately, 53 sources were selected for the study (see Figure 1).

Peters et al. (2015) recommend that the data extracted should align with the research questions. We, therefore, extracted data that will offer a comprehensive view of the reviewed papers and answer the research questions which included: (i) geographic location of the study, (ii) resource type around which the initiatives were organized, (iii) year of paper publication, (iv) name and type of journal, (v) methodological approaches (quantitative, qualitative, essay), (vi) theories employed in the paper, (vii) sociodemographics of commoners (gender, age, education level, household size, and income), (viii) individual motivations, and (ix) group motivations.

Research on the motivations for joining commons initiatives has been gaining momentum in the last eight years, with a majority of studies from the Global North, but also a number of studies from the Global South. This review linked motivational theories to the research on commons initiatives and provided insights as to who joins which types of commons initiatives, and what motivates them to do so.

As a first step, we were interested in finding out how people who are involved in commons initiatives can be characterized. We were surprised to see that the studies reviewed placed little emphasis on identifying sociodemographic characteristics as explanatory variables for engagement in commons initiatives. Our findings allow for no profound conclusions in this regard. Based on the rare characterization of the samples examined in the studies reviewed, we conclude that location (urban vs. rural), gender, education, and income level depend on the type of commons initiative under study. For example, studies on urban gardening reported more female members (Łapniewska, 2017; Martinho da Silva et al., 2016), whereas energy commons were dominated by men (Soeiro & Dias, 2020). In terms of age, the emerging picture is that commoners tend to be older than the average population. However, these assumptions are based on only a few studies and should be verified with more representative data in the future.

Second, we were interested in what individual motivations might explain commoners’ engagement in commons initiatives. Individual motivations to engage in commons initiatives found in the reviewed papers relate to well-known psychological motivational theories. On the one hand, we identified normative motives, as proposed by Value-Belief-Norm Theory (Stern et al., 1995) and the Norm Activation Model (Schwartz, 1994). Commoners are thus motivated to participate in commons as a result of biospheric values (Bonow & Normark, 2018; Cattivelli, 2023; Keane et al., 2016; Martinho da Silva et al., 2016; Savari et al., 2023; Soeiro & Dias, 2020; Torres et al., 2017; Turreira-García et al., 2018), a sense of ethical obligation (Aalbers et al., 2013; Łapniewska, 2017; Međugorac & Schuitema, 2023), and personal norms (Aalbers et al., 2013; Eizenberg, 2012; Łapniewska, 2017; Međugorac & Schuitema, 2023). In addition, the reviewed studies revealed motives based on self-interest as described by Social Cognition Theory (Bandura, 2002) and the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1991). Self-interest motives include positive outcome expectations, such as the opportunity to harvest produce from the garden (Keane et al., 2016; Martinez, 2020; Vita et al., 2020). The need for food is also a significant motivator, particularly for those in in urban agriculture (Cattivelli, 2023) and fishing commons (Quimby et al., 2020). Easy access to commons is another motivational factor, as individuals assess how easy or frustrating it is to participate in commons when they decide on their participation (Moser & Bader, 2023; Pal & Singh, 2021). Self-efficacy, which refers to belief in personal mastery and probability of success, also influences an individual to participate in commoning. This belief is held by urban garden commons, managers, and volunteers, with research finding personal capacity as a motivating factor (Aalbers et al., 2013; Avey et al., 2009; Goodfellow & Prahalad, 2022).

Third, we examined group motivations for joining commons initiatives. Our findings confirm, on the one hand, factors as described in motivation theories such as the Social Identity Approach (Brügger et al., 2020) and the Social Identity Model of Pro-Environmental Actions (Fritsche et al., 2018). A shared identity was evident in youth strikes, farmer cooperatives, fisherfolk, urban initiatives networks, urban agriculture, and volunteer gardeners (Allert & Reese, 2023; Avey et al., 2009; Bonow & Normark, 2018; Brügger et al., 2020; Cermeño et al., 2022; Dong et al., 2023; Łapniewska, 2017; Quimby et al., 2020; Torres et al., 2017). Collective efficacy beliefs are motivating factors for urban gardeners’ groups, cooperative farmer groups, political groups, knowledge commons, and energy commons (Brügger et al., 2020; Fait et al., 2023; Mambo Tampi et al., 2018; Savari et al., 2023; Soeiro & Dias, 2020; Torres et al., 2017; Winkler et al., 2019; Yuan et al., 2005). Our review revealed additional motivational factors that extend the known theories of motivation: Mutual support and reciprocity are key motivating factors for people to join commons initiatives (Cattivelli, 2023; Emich, 2012). Last but not least, trust is an important motivating factor for joining commons initiatives, as it has been observed in refugee-led commons, energy commons, housing commons, and internet-organized commons (Bauwens, 2016; Cermeño et al., 2022; Easton-Calabria & Hakiza, 2021; Łapniewska, 2022).

Fourth, we were interested in similarities and differences between the contexts of commons initiatives in the Global North and Global South. In terms of differences, commons initiatives in the Global North, such as Europe often involve urban participants, while in the Global South, like South Africa, rural residents are more familiar with cooperatives. Motivations for joining commons initiatives also varied. In the Global North, personal norms, self-efficacy, and belief in personal capability are identified as motivations (Aalbers et al., 2013; Avey et al., 2009; Goodfellow & Prahalad, 2022) while in the Global South, mutual support and reciprocity are observed (Ambuehl et al., 2022; Dong et al., 2023). It is important to note that personal capability and mutual support have not been directly compared. Biospheric values related to environmental conservation are present in both regions, but to varying degrees. Motivating factors in both regions include collaboration and shared decision-making, emphasizing the importance of participatory approaches in commons management, as well as trust, highlighting the importance of trust in maintaining and governing common resources. Interestingly, no particular motivation was overly present in the reviewed papers. This shows that research on the topic is both diverse and in need of systematization.

Our findings support the relevance of the different psychological theories in understanding participation in commons. We provide empirical examples of how attitudes, beliefs, self-efficacy, values, shared identity, social norms, and trust play pivotal roles in motivating individuals and groups to engage in commons-based initiatives. This alignment between theory and empirics enhances our theoretical understanding of collective action and resource management in commons. The findings have theoretical implications. The integration of several theoretical frameworks in the future would provide a stronger theoretical foundation for understanding the complexity of individual and communal incentives in the commons setting. By referring to a range of theories, researchers can capture the complex nature of motives and account for the interplay between sociodemographic, individual, and collective factors. This broadens our theoretical understanding and creates the possibility for further research to advance and refine existing concepts on commons engagement.

Practically, understanding these motivations can have an impact on the design of programmes and tools that foster a supportive environment for commons to thrive, encourage collaboration, and include participants in decision-making processes in commons initiatives. For practitioners seeking to promote bottom-up solutions through self-organised groups, their strategies could focus on meetings (as they provide a sense of community), storytelling that emphasises identity, and inclusive decision-making to promote trust, agency, and self-efficacy. Group meetings are crucial, but the decision-making process is equally important. If the group had to decide during a meeting, a focus on consensus-building would be better for group longevity than majority rule.

In our review, we examined 53 studies that reported sociodemographic and motivational factors characterizing people in commons initiatives. Despite the breadth of the papers considered, our study is limited by the focus on different commons and not a specific type of commons (for instance, energy commons). The broader aspect meant we did not have an in-depth discussion and analysis of commons in a single sector. Also, we did not include keywords such as “public goods”, and “common pool resources”. The initial search by the first author with these two phrases did not provide new papers beyond what was already gathered. Thus, excluding these search terms does not impact our results. The paper still provides a solid basis for further investigation to better understand factors such as mutual support, reciprocity, and trust.

Another limitation is our selection of databases. With a focus on Scopus, Web of Science, JSTOR, and Google Scholar (grey literature), we acknowledge we may not have covered all the potentially relevant papers that could have helped answer our research questions. For instance, we did not consider blog entries like Excelsior Online Writing Lab (OWL) which is an interesting field for a discursive analysis of motivations for joining a commons. Instead, we chose to take a more theory-driven approach. However, such an analysis might be useful in future efforts. While our selection was extensive, it does not include all viable sources, potentially excluding some relevant research.

The findings of our scoping review highlight the diversity of individuals participating in commons initiatives as well as the complexity of their motivations. The theoretical frameworks utilized in the reviewed papers assist in our understanding of the underlying ideas that guide collective activities in commons. Despite these contributions, the authors noticed some topics that did not feature in the articles selected for the scoping review and that should be addressed in future research.

First, the studies did not seek to find out if motivations for joining commons change over time. This would involve examining the differences in motivation at the start of an engagement or at the time of joining, compared to keeping up the participation. In this respect, topics for study could relate to the phases of involvement of commoners and how they differ among generations (e.g., first/founding and second generation of members), or to the phenomenon of pioneer burnout as mentioned by Geels (2019). Another aspect to consider when studying changing motivations over time is if it is a newly founded community or a well-established commons (e.g., an existing housing cooperative). Future studies can contribute to this area by undertaking longitudinal research.

Second, there was little focus on expanding existing theories to cover more contexts. Also, there is a dearth of literature on evaluation/expectations about processes (e.g., that democratic decision-finding could be demotivating some people). Thus, questions remain on the theorization of individual and group motivations to join commons. For instance, do phases of involvement and degrees of participation matter in the motivations to join commons and continued participation? Further studies may consider these niches.

Third, several of the reviewed studies focused on single countries and the ones that were cross-country tended to be in similar sub regions. The review found systematic differences between participants in the Global North and Global South and it is key to investigate these more systematically. Consequently, future studies must compare motivations across the Global North and South.

Fourth, future studies should move beyond single cases (e.g., a sole focus on urban gardeners) that were prevalent in the reviewed papers. It is worth exploring the possibility that individuals in similar locations may have different motivations for joining specific commons. Related to this argument is that motivations may vary depending on the type of natural resource, which requires comparisons between the motivations for joining commons with respect to various resource types.

Finally, do people who join commons have different motivations or significant differences in biospheric values compared to people who do not engage in commons initiatives? Do they have different perceptions and motivations? While these are interesting questions worth knowing the answers to, the reviewed papers were silent on such areas. Future studies may consider such questions.

Commons initiatives are often seen as promising answers to the problem of overuse of natural resources (Kennedy, 2020). By focusing on the question of who engages in commons initiatives and why they do so, we contribute with our review to a better understanding of the successful emergence and existence of commons initiatives and thus a more sustainable use of our natural resources in the future.