Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Change, Moral Decision-Making, and Resource Allocation

当地社区越来越多地受到管理稀缺自然资源和生态系统服务以造福公共利益的需要的挑战。社会科学家发现，当管理权保持在地方层面时，往往比自上而下制定的政策成本更低、效率更高。然而，随着社区变得越来越大，技术变得越来越复杂，地方管理可能会被来自更高级别的计划和政策所取代。这就提出了一个问题：是什么让地方控制取得了成功？范德比尔特大学博士生沃纳·赫佐格将在诺伯特·O·罗斯博士的指导下，进行研究来回答这个问题。这些发现将有助于我们从理论上理解文化、经济行为和制度之间的关系。反过来，这可以帮助政府和私人组织设计建立在现有资源管理系统基础上的资源管理系统，节省资金并保持地方控制。这项研究将在墨西哥南部的佐齐尔-玛雅市进行。之所以选择这个地点，是因为该地区在过去50年里经历了巨大的变化。此外，现代化对Tzotzil村庄的影响并不均衡，这使得调查人员能够在单一的生态环境和民族语言群体中比较不同社区进入市场和现代基础设施的程度。试点研究揭示了较传统的(农村)和较现代的(城市)Tzotzil村在管理资源分配的公平观念方面的系统性差异。这些数据表明，这些社区的现代化与新的司法和社会文化模式的出现联系在一起，这些发现与记录该地区社会变化的认知影响的相关研究的结果一致。因此，研究人员将探索文化模式和道德价值观在调节认知、社会组织和行为方面的经济和适应系统方面的动态和影响。他将使用一种混合方法，结合：(1)详细的观察方法，记录社区和家庭做出资源分配决策的过程；以及(2)经济和行为实验，以索引人们如何解决假设的资源分配问题的道德偏好。通过关注社会变化，这项研究有助于我们理解现代化如何影响传统的知识体系，以及文化和道德观念如何影响资源管理实践。

Increasingly, local communities are challenged by the need to manage scarce natural resources and ecosystem services for the common good. Social scientists have found that when management authority remains at the local level, it is often less expensive and more effective than policies established from the top down. However, as communities become larger and technologies become more complicated, local management may be replaced by programs and policies emanating from higher levels. This raises the question of what it is that makes local control successful. With the guidance of Dr. Norbert O. Ross, Vanderbilt University doctoral student, Werner Hertzog, will undertake research to answer this question. Findings will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the relationship between culture, economic behavior, and institutions. This, in turn, can help government and private organizations design resource management systems that build on existing ones, saving money and preserving local control.The research will be conducted in a Tzotzil-Maya municipality of southern Mexico. This site was chosen because the region has undergone drastic changes over the past five decades. Furthermore, modernization has affected Tzotzil villages unevenly, which allows investigators to compare communities differing in degree of access to markets and modern infrastructure within a single ecological setting and ethno-linguistic group. Pilot studies have revealed systematic differences between more traditional (rural) and more modern (urban) Tzotzil villages with respect to notions of fairness regulating resource allocation. These data suggest that modernization in these communities is tied to the emergence of new cultural models of justice and society, findings which are in line with results from related research documenting the cognitive effects of social change within the area. Therefore, the researcher will explore the dynamics and effects of cultural models and moral values in regulating economic and adaptive systems in cognition, social organization, and behavior. He will use a mixed methods approach combining: (1) detailed observational methods to document the processes through which communities and households make resource allocation decisions; and (2) economic and behavioral experiments to index moral preferences in how people solve hypothetical problems of resource allocation. By focusing on social change the research contributes to our understanding of how modernization affects traditional systems of knowledge and of how culture and moral notions affect resource management practices.