Free Rider's Problem

In the analyses of economics, free riders are actors who take more than their fair share of the benefits or do not shoulder their fair share of the costs of their use of a resource, involvement in a project, etc. The free rider problem is the question of how to prevent free riding from taking place, or at least limit its effects. Free riders attempt to use the public good without paying for it. Due to this, markets often have a difficult time in producing public goods as free riders use public goods without paying nothing. The free rider problem can be overcome through measures to assure that users of the public good pay for it. Such measures include government actions, social pressures, and specific situations where markets have discovered a way to collect payments.