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

这项研究将探讨规范是如何维持的，以及它们是如何变化的，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。其研究结果将揭示人们如何在规范背景下做出决定，以及哪些因素决定了规范是否以及如何在新的社会，经济，环境或政治力量下发生变化。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，并将为美国提供培训。基于研究生和本科生。本项目研究如何从合作农业盈余分工规范是保持尽管对规范的偏好。该规范规定，合作农业的家庭应按家庭平均分配收益，而不管相对的土地和劳动贡献。将通过以下方式收集数据：1）调查，以记录人们的耕作做法; 2）小插曲，以了解对合作耕作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logit模型进行分析，以确定当社会压力不存在时，个人如何获得关于做什么的私人偏好，当社会压力存在时，他们如何确定最佳选择，以及这些规范决策算法如何导致观察到的行为。数据和分析旨在确定个人决策算法，并允许测试规范的转变模型。通过开发与实地工作兼容的方法来同时测量规范的所有要素，并将规范作为一个复杂的系统进行研究，该研究推进了使用整体框架来检查规范的停滞和变化。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.