Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effect of Risk, Time Preference, and Poverty on the Impacts of Forest Property Rights Reform

本论文的研究探讨如何个人偏好随着时间的推移（现在与未来）和风险可以影响人们的森林管理的反应，加强森林产权。为了遏制世界森林的持续退化，许多发展中国家实施了产权改革，将这些资源的责任从国家转移到社区和个人，他们可以在管理和采伐森林方面做出自己的决定。这些改革的目标是鼓励可持续地利用资源;然而，改革努力往往未能实现这一目标。与改革的目标相反，那些强烈偏好眼前利益或不愿承担未来风险的个人（这两种情况在穷人中很常见）可能会更快地使用森林资源，即使给予更强的产权。本研究在中国农村的背景下考察这些问题，在贫困率仍然很高的地区进行了大规模的森林产权改革。本研究使用涉及真实的货币奖励的实地实验来捕捉林农个人的时间和风险偏好，然后将实地实验数据与家庭层面的调查数据整合在一个框架中，以确定家庭森林投资的变化（例如，造林、劳动等）这项研究将通过研究人们如何根据个人偏好对产权改革作出反应的异质性，来补充现有的关于产权有效性的文献，以鼓励可持续的自然资源管理。此外，这项研究将在实验中引起的偏好与对制度改革的行为反应联系起来，这是以前很少有研究做过的。这项研究的结果对中国和其他地方的政策制定者很重要，因为它将确定产权改革可能无法如预期那样发挥作用的情况。

This dissertation research examines how individual preferences over time (present vs. future) and risk can affect people's forest management responses to strengthened forest property rights. In an effort to stem on-going degradation of the world's forests, many developing countries have implemented property right reforms that transfer responsibility for these resources from the state to communities and individuals, who can then make their own decisions in managing and harvesting the forests. The goal of such reforms is to encourage sustainable resource use; however, too often reform efforts have failed to achieve this goal. Contrary to the goal of the reform, individuals with a strong preference for immediate benefits or who are unwilling to take future risks (both of which are common among the poor) may use the forest resources faster even when given stronger property rights.This research examines these issues in the context of rural China, where a large-scale reform of forest property rights has been implemented in areas where the poverty rate is still high. This research uses field experiments that involve real monetary rewards to capture individual time and risk preferences of forestholders and then integrates the field experiment data with household-level survey data in a framework to identify how changes in household's forest investment (e.g., afforestation, labor, etc.) in response to stronger property rights depends on their preferences over time and risk.This research will add to the existing literature on the effectiveness of property rights to encourage sustainable natural resource management by examining the heterogeneity in how people respond to property rights reform depending on individual preferences. Also, this research will link preferences elicited in experiments to behavioral responses to institutional reforms as few previous studies have done. The outcome of this research is important to policymakers in China and elsewhere because it will identify circumstances in which property rights reform may not work as intended.