Doctoral Dissertation Research: Norm stasis and change in the context of cooperative farming

这项研究将研究规范是如何维持和如何变化的，这是一个鲜为人知的现象，是解释人类社会进化和当代文化变革的关键。它的发现将揭示人们如何在规范背景下做出决策，以及哪些因素决定了规范在新的社会、经济、环境或政治力量下是否以及如何变化。调查结果将通过网络表格、新闻报道和外联活动广泛传播。此外，该研究将加强STEM劳动力和研究基础设施，并将为在美国的研究生和本科生提供培训。本项目考察了合作农业的剩余分配规范是如何在反对规范的情况下维持的。该规范规定，合作耕作的家庭应将收益平均分配，而不考虑相对的土地和劳动力贡献。数据将通过以下方式收集：1)调查以记录人们的农业实践；2)小片段以引出对合作农业安排的规范态度和偏好；3)记录每个家庭的日常活动和货物流动。这些数据将用多项逻辑模型进行分析，以确定个体如何在没有社会压力时获得关于做什么的私人偏好，当社会压力存在时他们如何确定最优选择，以及这些规范性决策算法如何导致观察到的行为。数据和分析的目的是查明个人决策算法，并允许测试规范的转移模型。通过开发与实地工作相兼容的方法来同时测量规范的所有元素，并将规范作为一个复杂的系统来研究，该研究推进了使用整体框架来检查规范停滞和变化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This research will examine how norms are maintained and how they change, a poorly understood phenomenon that is key to explaining human social evolution and contemporary cultural change. Its findings will shed light on how people make decisions in normative contexts, and what factors determine whether and how a norm changes under new social, economic, environmental or political forces. The findings will be disseminated widely through web forms, news reports and outreach events. In addition, the research will strengthen the STEM workforce and research infrastructure, and will provide training to U.S.-based graduate and undergraduate students. This project examines how a surplus division norm from cooperative farming is maintained despite preferences against the norm. The norm specifies that households that cooperate in farming should divide the gains equally by household, regardless of the relative land and labor contribution. Data will be collected through 1) surveys to document people’s farming practices, 2) vignettes to elicit normative attitudes and preferences on cooperative farming arrangements, and 3) recordings of each household’s daily activity and goods flow. The data will be analyzed with multinomial logit models to identify how individuals acquire private preferences about what to do when social pressure is absent, how they determine the optimal choice when social pressure is present, and how such normative decision algorithms lead to the observed behaviors. The data and analyses are designed to pinpoint individual decision-making algorithms and allow for tests of normative shift models. By developing fieldwork-compatible methodologies to measure all the elements of a norm at the same time and study the norm as a complex system, the research advances the use of holistic frameworks to examine norm stasis and change.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.