Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Change, Moral Decision-Making, and Resource Allocation

地方社区日益面临着为共同利益管理稀缺自然资源和生态系统服务的需要的挑战。 社会科学家发现，当管理权力仍然在地方一级时，它往往比自上而下制定的政策更便宜，更有效。然而，随着社区变得越来越大，技术变得越来越复杂，地方管理可能会被来自更高级别的计划和政策所取代。 这就提出了一个问题，即是什么使地方控制取得成功。在Norbert O.罗斯，范德比尔特大学博士生，维尔纳赫佐格，将进行研究，以回答这个问题。 研究结果将有助于我们对文化、经济行为和制度之间关系的理论理解。这反过来又可以帮助政府和私人组织设计建立在现有基础上的资源管理系统，节省资金并保持地方控制。这项研究将在墨西哥南部的佐齐尔-玛雅市进行。之所以选择这一地点，是因为该地区在过去五十年中经历了巨大的变化。 此外，现代化对Tzotzil村庄的影响不均衡，这使调查人员能够比较单一生态环境和民族语言群体内进入市场和现代基础设施程度不同的社区。试点研究表明，在管理资源分配的公平概念方面，传统的（农村）和现代的（城市）Tzotzil村庄之间存在系统性差异。这些数据表明，这些社区的现代化与新的正义和社会文化模式的出现有关，这些发现与记录该地区社会变革认知影响的相关研究结果一致。因此，研究者将探讨文化模式和道德价值观在调节认知，社会组织和行为的经济和适应系统中的动态和影响。他将使用一种混合方法，结合：（1）详细的观察方法，以记录社区和家庭做出资源分配决策的过程;（2）经济和行为实验，以索引人们如何解决假设的资源分配问题的道德偏好。通过关注社会变化，研究有助于我们了解现代化如何影响传统的知识体系，以及文化和道德观念如何影响资源管理实践。

Increasingly, local communities are challenged by the need to manage scarce natural resources and ecosystem services for the common good. Social scientists have found that when management authority remains at the local level, it is often less expensive and more effective than policies established from the top down. However, as communities become larger and technologies become more complicated, local management may be replaced by programs and policies emanating from higher levels. This raises the question of what it is that makes local control successful. With the guidance of Dr. Norbert O. Ross, Vanderbilt University doctoral student, Werner Hertzog, will undertake research to answer this question. Findings will contribute to our theoretical understanding of the relationship between culture, economic behavior, and institutions. This, in turn, can help government and private organizations design resource management systems that build on existing ones, saving money and preserving local control.The research will be conducted in a Tzotzil-Maya municipality of southern Mexico. This site was chosen because the region has undergone drastic changes over the past five decades. Furthermore, modernization has affected Tzotzil villages unevenly, which allows investigators to compare communities differing in degree of access to markets and modern infrastructure within a single ecological setting and ethno-linguistic group. Pilot studies have revealed systematic differences between more traditional (rural) and more modern (urban) Tzotzil villages with respect to notions of fairness regulating resource allocation. These data suggest that modernization in these communities is tied to the emergence of new cultural models of justice and society, findings which are in line with results from related research documenting the cognitive effects of social change within the area. Therefore, the researcher will explore the dynamics and effects of cultural models and moral values in regulating economic and adaptive systems in cognition, social organization, and behavior. He will use a mixed methods approach combining: (1) detailed observational methods to document the processes through which communities and households make resource allocation decisions; and (2) economic and behavioral experiments to index moral preferences in how people solve hypothetical problems of resource allocation. By focusing on social change the research contributes to our understanding of how modernization affects traditional systems of knowledge and of how culture and moral notions affect resource management practices.