What theory explains where motivation to do something depends on perception of others' input? I'm trying to read up on the phenomena where one person's desire/motivation to do a certain task or obligation within a system of process is influenced by whether he thinks others in that process are also doing their job. 

For examples:


"John's willingness to report a crime to the police is low because he feels the cops in his town are incompetent. He thinks his efforts will just be wasted"
"Mike's desire to recycle is high because he sees how serious the city council are in collecting and separating the waste"


Currently I'm thinking Ryan &amp; Deci's Self-determination Theory might fit to explain this (the competence part or the 3 SDT pillars), but SDT only concerns with the individual's sense of achievement/competence. My angle is more like "I will do [won't do] my part because I know someone else down the line will do [won't do] their part to achieve the objective", so there is a social/systems element to it.

I'm also thinking maybe it's literature around scepticism, but that concept is closer to James Randi-esque 'scientific scepticism' rather than what I'm going for. Pessimism doesn't really work as well, since it deals mostly with personal/internal factors as opposed to external..

Any ideas what theory/literature talks about this?

Edit: answered my own question below.
I've found if not an answer then at least a good starting point to this. 

The theory of trust in management literature explains that in a contractual situation, the actors may be motivated to fulfil their end of the bargain based on the trust they place to the actor on the opposite side. Specifically, there's two types of trust:


Competence trust = perception that the other party is able to fulfil their end of the contract.
Goodwill trust = perception that the other party will fulfil their end of the contract. 


Even though this discusses it in a formal contract setting, I feel this applies to 'social contract' context as well, i.e part of why a person is willing to spend effort on something like fill up tax reports is because he trusts that his effort will not be reciprocated by the tax agency who will then handle the money and make use of it properly.

The paper is here: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.114.3411&amp;rep=rep1&amp;type=pdf