Scarcity sharpens the conflict between short term gains and long term sustainability. Psychological research documents that decision makers focus on immediate needs under scarcity and use available resources more effectively. However, decision makers also borrow too much from future resources and overall performance decreases as a consequence. Using an online experiment, we study how scarcity affects borrowing decisions in groups. We first document that scarcity affects groups in a similar way as individuals. Then, we go on to show that the negative effect of scarcity is weaker for groups than for individuals. Even in a minimal design that excludes direct interaction or communication, the fact that participants know that their own behavior affects and can be partly observed by another participant disciplines their use of scarce resources. Our results thus highlight the benefit of groups as units of human organization.

稀缺性加剧了短期收益与长期可持续性之间的矛盾。心理研究文件表明，决策者将重点放在稀缺情况下的紧急需求上，并更有效地利用可用资源。但是，决策者也从未来资源中借了太多钱，结果导致整体绩效下降。通过在线实验，我们研究了稀缺性如何影响群体借贷决策。我们首先证明稀缺性以与个人相似的方式影响群体。然后，我们继续表明，稀缺的负面影响对于群体而言比对个体要弱。即使在不进行直接交互或沟通的最小设计中，参与者也知道自己的行为会影响并可以被另一参与者部分观察到这一事实，这也限制了他们对稀缺资源的使用。