"Ownership provides clear incentives for people to care for their resources. "

"One of my most memorable lessons about incentives came during college. My university, Berry College, purchased dozens of bikes to distribute throughout campus. The red-painted 'Berry Bikes' were free to use, intended for students to ride easily between buildings to and from class.
    "The programme famously flopped. Shortly after it launched, the student newspaper reported that 'chains have been broken, tires punctured, handlebars bent, and seats torn.' Appeals to 'treat the bikes as if they were your own property' were ignored. Two months in, the project was abandoned.
    "Dozens of universities launched similar bike-sharing projects around that time, all with the same result. Two-thirds of Northern Arizona University’s free 'yellow bikes' were stolen or vandalised during the project’s first semester. Purdue’s 'Gold Bike' programme lasted less than a month. At Florida’s Eckerd College, $25,000 worth of bikes disappeared. Students devised a clever way to use the few that remained—by taking the seats with them to class to ensure the bike would still be there later.
    "Several cities tried free bike programmes, too.In Portland, Oregon, community activists released 1,000 yellow bikes on city streets. Almost all were stolen or vandalised within a few months. Tampa’s 'Orangecycles' programme ended just weeks after it began. Another programme in Princeton, New Jersey, failed so badly that the local paper reported finding a free bike was 'kind of like seeing Elvis.'
    "The lesson is one that applies as much to free bikes as does to the conservation issues on which the Property and Environment Research Center (PERC) works: Ownership provides clear incentives for people to care for their resources. But when assets are freely available for anyone to use—or abuse—without consequence, those incentives disappear."

~ Shawn Regan from his introduction to a special issue of PERC Reports demonstrating the importance of incentives across a wide range of issues from rangeland health to water conservation.