The Role of Cultural and Economics in the Consumption of Bushmeat

非洲中部森林覆盖的刚果盆地的许多居民依靠野生动物的肉作为他们主要的饮食蛋白质来源。因此，每年有100多万公吨的羚羊、猴子、猿猴、大象、猪和啮齿动物被捕杀和吃掉。随着人类人口的快速增长，森林动物面临的威胁是严重的。这项研究研究了人们吃丛林肉的原因，检验了这一命题，即这并不总是根深蒂固的文化偏好，而是受制于价格偏好。包括一名人类生态学家、一名文化人类学家和一名经济学家在内的研究人员将与当地研究人员合作，进行定性的人种学研究、游戏消费的家庭调查，以及旨在分析文化和经济对消费决策的影响的实验。这项研究将提供热带雨林中对丛林肉消费的文化态度和偏好的最详细的人种学描述；将第一次评估丛林肉消费对经济变量变化的反应；将以一种创新的方法将调查和实验相结合，以估计经验变量，并将更好地了解以市场为基础的方法对减轻丛林肉消费不利影响的可能有效性。实证结果将对自然资源保护者和政策制定者有价值，并有助于关于文化和经济学在行为中的作用的理论辩论。

Many residents of Central Africa's forested Congo Basin rely on the meat of wild animals as their primary source of dietary protein. As a result over one million metric tons of antelope, monkeys, apes, elephants, pigs and rodents are killed and eaten each year. As the human population is growing rapidly, the threat to forest animals is severe. This research studies the reasons why people eat bushmeat, testing the proposition that it is not invariably a deeply-rooted cultural preference, but is subject to price preferences. The researchers, including a human ecologist, a cultural anthropologist and an economist will collaborate with local researchers in a qualitative ethnographic study, household surveys of game consumption, and experiments designed to parse out the effect of culture and economics in consumption decisions. The research will provide the most detailed ethnographic account of cultural attitudes towards and preferences for bushmeat consumption in a tropical rain forest; will be the first to assess the response of bushmeat consumption to changes in economic variables; will combine surveys and experiments in an innovative methodology to estimate empirical variables, and will provide a better understanding of the likely effectiveness of market-based approaches to mitigating the adverse impact of bushmeat consumption. The empirical results will be valuable to conservationists and policy makers as well as contributing to the theoretical debate about the role of culture and economics in behavior.