<P> The tragedy of the commons is a term used in social science to describe a situation in a shared - resource system where individual users acting independently according to their own self - interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action . The concept and phrase originated in an essay written in 1833 by the British economist William Forster Lloyd, who used a hypothetical example of the effects of unregulated grazing on common land (also known as a "common") in the British Isles . The concept became widely known over a century later due to an article written by the American ecologist and philosopher Garrett Hardin in 1968 . In this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, or even an office refrigerator . </P> <P> It has been argued that the very term' tragedy of the Commons' is a misnomer, since' the commons' referred to land resources with rights jointly owned by members of a community, and no individual outside the community had any access to the resource . However, the term is now used in social science and economics when describing a problem where all individuals have equal and open access to a resource . Hence,' tragedy of open access regimes' or simply' the open access problem' are more apt terms .' </P>

The originator of the tragedy of the commons metaphor was