The Role of Cultural and Economics in the Consumption of Bushmeat

中非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膳食蛋白质的主要来源。 因此，每年有超过100万公吨的羚羊、猴子、猿、大象、猪和啮齿动物被捕杀和食用。 随着人口的迅速增长，森林动物受到的威胁也越来越严重。 这项研究研究的原因，人们吃瘦肉，测试的命题，这不是一个根深蒂固的文化偏好，但受价格偏好。 研究人员，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，将与当地研究人员合作进行定性民族志研究，对游戏消费进行家庭调查，并进行旨在分析文化和经济对消费决策影响的实验。 这项研究将提供最详细的人种学资料，说明对热带雨林中食用瘦肉的文化态度和偏好;将首次评估瘦肉消费对经济变量变化的反应;将联合收割机调查和实验相结合的创新方法来估计经验变量，并将使人们更好地了解以市场为基础的办法在减轻食用瘦肉的不利影响方面可能产生的效果。实证结果将是有价值的保护主义者和政策制定者，以及有助于理论辩论的文化和经济行为的作用。

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.