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

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

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.