RAPID: The Costs of Peace: War Experience, Territorial Loss, and Peace Agreement Consensus in Ukraine

俄乌战争提出了一个重要问题，即是否有可能实现稳定的和平解决。这个项目通过追踪战争经历如何塑造普通乌克兰人对不同和平解决方案的态度来研究这个问题。它特别关注人们的经历和特征如何塑造他们对潜在领土让步的倾向。目前各方都承认这种让步是通往和平道路的一部分。然而，鉴于巨大的抵抗和痛苦，目睹朋友和家人的死亡，以及非同寻常的破坏和流离失所，可以提出一个问题，即普通乌克兰人是否接受进一步丧失国家领土作为和平的必要代价。更深入地了解普通民众如何评估和平的成本，可以极大地为各国政府和国际第三方准备、谈判和执行和平协定提供信息。为了进一步了解人们的战时经历如何影响他们对需要领土让步的和平协议的立场，该项目试图揭示普通乌克兰人对和平的倾向的社会心理过程和战时经历。学术文献表明，战争经历对对待和平代价的态度有不同的影响。有证据表明，直接接触暴力和破坏可能会增加乌克兰人对迫在眉睫的威胁的感觉，这可能反过来增加他们支持领土让步的意愿，以此作为结束暴力敌对行动的手段。其他证据表明，愤怒、对乌克兰身份和价值观的威胁，以及对那些为保卫乌克兰土地而牺牲的人的敬意，可能会使人们对领土妥协的态度变得更加强硬。在这种情况下，战争可能使所有乌克兰领土成为普通乌克兰人的“神圣价值”（绝对的和不可谈判的）。这将减少领土妥协的可能性，并使任何解决方案都可能不稳定。本研究使用多种方法来探索在人们努力解决这些困境时起作用的复杂因素。该项目包括收集和定量分析大量乌克兰人的调查数据，其中包括当地人和国内流离失所者，这些人分布在靠近战斗发生地区的三个城镇。该调查用于确定来自同一三个城镇的小群体公民参与焦点小组。这些讨论为了解公民如何理解和评估与潜在和平协议相关的权衡提供了进一步的机会。对调查和小组讨论的综合分析为关注和平协定的学者、政策制定者和实践者提供了理论和实践意义的发展信息。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。

The Russia-Ukraine War raises an important question about whether a stable peace settlement is possible. This project examines the question by tracing the ways that wartime experiences shape ordinary Ukrainians’ attitudes toward different peace settlement scenarios. It focuses specifically on how people’s experiences and characteristics shape their dispositions toward potential territorial concessions. Such concessions are presently recognized by all sides as part of the road toward peace. Yet, in light of great resistance and suffering, witnessing the death of friends and family members, and extraordinary destruction and displacement, the question can be raised whether ordinary Ukrainians accept the loss of further state territory as a necessary price for peace. Deeper understanding of how general populations assess the cost of peace can greatly inform preparation, negotiation and implementation of peace agreements by both national governments and international third parties. To advance understanding of how people’s wartime experiences influence their positions toward peace agreements requiring territorial concessions, this project seeks to uncover the social psychological processes and wartime experiences informing the dispositions of ordinary Ukrainians toward peace. The scholarly literature suggests divergent impacts of war experience on attitude towards the costs of peace. One line of evidence suggests that direct exposure to violence and destruction may increase Ukrainians’ perception of immediate threat, which may in turn increase their willingness to support territorial concessions as a means to end violent hostilities. Other lines of evidence suggest that anger, threats to Ukrainian identity and values, and desire to honor the sacrifice of those who died defending Ukrainian land, may harden attitudes toward territorial compromises. In this context, war may have made all Ukrainian territory a ‘sacred value’ (absolute and non-negotiable) to ordinary Ukrainians. This would reduce the possibility of territorial compromise, and make any settlement potentially unstable. This study uses multiple methods to explore the complex factors that come into play as people work to resolve these dilemmas. The project includes collection and quantitative analysis of survey data from a large sample of Ukrainians, including locals and internally displaced people, across three towns close to the regions where active fighting is taking place. The survey is used to identify small groups of citizens across the same three towns to participate in focus groups. These discussions provide further opportunity to learn about how citizens make sense of and assess tradeoffs associated with a potential peace agreement. Integrated analysis of the survey and group discussions inform the development of theoretical and practical implications for scholars, policymakers and practitioners focused on peace agreements.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.