Community participation in managing natural resources /
Community participation is central to economic analysis of
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| Format: | Thesis Book |
| Language: | English |
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[Place of publication not identified] :
[publisher not identified] ;
1997.
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| Online Access: | http://proxy.library.tamu.edu/login?url=http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=739839841&sid=1&Fmt=2&clientId=2945&RQT=309&VName=PQD |
| Summary: | Community participation is central to economic analysis of many natural and environmental resource problems including the problem of local commons. Yet, prevailing economic analyses treat various forms of institutions of community participation as exogenous. Unfortunately, this conventional assumption does not allow economists to address many natural and environmental resource problems. This dissertation deals with the complex interactions between humans, their institutions and the environment. Economics, as understood here, is not limited to a "selfish, rational individual" interacting with his/her fellow players only to maximize short term material gains. Instead, current research adopts the proposition from Hirshleifer (1980) that all human motivations and interactions constitute the subject matter of economics, so long as they respond to the pervasive fact of resource scarcity. Reciprocity or reciprocal behavior is a major form of human motivation and interaction that has important economic implications for resolving the problem of local commons. An evolutionary approach is developed on the problem of cooperation in local commons. This approach (i) demonstrates that the prevailing theories on local commons such as theories of collective action, prisoner's dilemma game (PD), repeated PD and assurance problem (AP) in the context of classic noncooperative game theory misrepresent the situation in local commons, (ii) suggests a wider framework by incorporating fundamental insights originating from the self-organization paradigm and evolutionary economics, (iii) develops an evolutionary repeated PD game with the strategy of reciprocity and derives the results that the strategy of reciprocity is an evolutionary stable equilibrium, and (iv) suggests possible escape routes for the situation where all defection is the ruling equilibrium. An empirical application of the model was implemented to gain greater understanding of what factors influence individuals to participate in community management of local commons. The results of the hypothesis tests indicated that the evolutionary model is helpful in understanding community participation in managing watersheds. Farmers' reciprocal expectations about fellow farmers' behavior, attitudes towards future generations, attitudes towards profit maximization, attitudes towards other pollution sources in the watershed, education level, and age were strongly correlated with their decision whether or not to participate in community management of watersheds. |
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| Item Description: | Vita. "Major Subject: Agricultural Economics". |
| Physical Description: | xi, 94 leaves : illustrations ; 28 cm. Issued also on microfiche from University Microfilms Inc. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references: pages 77-84. |