Shared toilets are a common good in urban slums, but need to be maintained and cleaned for users to positively benefit from having access to them. Collective participation of the shared toilet users is required to keep them clean and ensure adequate hygiene. However, users' decisions on whether to participate or not in the cleaning of the shared toilets are a social dilemma. If each of the shared toilets' users decided not to participate in their cleaning, the facilities could end up in a deteriorated unhygienic state and become a health risk to them and to the community at large. In this paper, we provide an overview of the social dilemma approach and highlight how the factors important in the management of social dilemmas can be relevant to understanding the cleaning behaviour of shared toilet users in urban slums.