Predicting Pasture and Forest Landowner Intention to Create Early Successional Habitat

As human land uses expand across the landscape, the management practices of private landowners are an essential part of effective conservation. Early successional habitats (ESH) and the species that depend on them are a priority in the eastern United States, and efforts to create ESH on private lands has primarily focused on forest landowners and timber harvests. Private pasture lands in a forested landscape present an additional opportunity to create and maintain ESH, yet our understanding of landowner values and attitudes about management strategies in pastures is lacking. To address this, we surveyed private landowners in 5 Virginia counties who own ≥10.1 ha at >610 m elevation (n = 503). Our primary objective was to understand how a variety of factors such as landowner values, past experience with habitat management, and perceived barriers to carrying out habitat management are associated with private landowner intention to carry out 7 ESH management strategies (i.e., reduced mowing, reduced grazing, timber harvests within forest, timber harvests at a field-forest border, prescribed fire, use of machinery, and use of herbicides to control invasive species) for the benefit of wildlife in the next 5 years. We used boosted regression trees to determine which factors best predicted the intention to carry out each management strategy. We were able to predict accuracy >75% of the time for landowner intention to engage in open pasture and timber management strategies. Landowner values were not consistent across the different management strategies; landowners likely to reduce mowing or grazing valued ecological aspects of their land (e.g., pollinator habitat, water quality), whereas landowners likely to harvest timber valued hunting and revenue. Past experience with wildlife management was the strongest predictor of likelihood to reduce mowing and grazing. Our results suggest that expanding outreach efforts to include pasture management options would engage a broader set of landowners in creating ESH, especially if such efforts highlighted the benefits to pollinator species, water quality, and enhanced opportunities for hunting and other types of recreation. © 2021 The Wildlife Society.     

Collective Action and Social Capital of Wildlife Management Associations

Abstract: In areas with dense landownership patterns, management of white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) depends upon collective decision making of landowners and hunters. To resolve conflicts associated with this commons dilemma, wildlife management associations (WMAs) have become a popular mechanism for coordinating wildlife management decisions in private land states, especially in Texas, USA. Social capital, represented by metrics such as trust, reciprocity, and community involvement, has been identified as an important determinant of the success of collaborative institutional arrangements. To determine the influence of social capital on the effectiveness of WMAs, we address 2 research questions: 1) do WMAs exhibit elements of social capital, and 2) what landowner characteristics affect elements of social capital within WMAs? We used a mail survey questionnaire to determine the effect of various factors on the activities and management practices in 4 WMAs in 2 regions in Texas: the Lower Post Oak Savannah (LPOS) and the Central Post Oak Savannah (CPOS). The LPOS landowners were members of larger associations, had generally acquired their land more recently, held more frequent meetings, and tended to have longer association membership than CPOS landowners, yet they exhibited lower social capital. The CPOS landowners owned significantly larger properties, and were predominantly absentee wealthy males that considered relaxation and hunting more important land uses than property ownership for a place to live. The smaller group size of the CPOS associations may be the most important factor in building and maintaining social capital. Intra-association trust, a primary measure of social capital, was positively influenced by the longevity of property ownership, the number of association meetings, the percentage of males in the association, and other factors. Conversely, negative influences on trust included absentee ownership and the proportion of woodland habitat present in each WMA. We suggest that deer are a common-pool resource whose populations are dependent upon collective action by stakeholders. Social capital building within landowner associations could facilitate the sustainable harvest of quality deer and possibly lead to cooperative management of other common-pool natural resources.     

Sex-Related Online Behaviors,Perceived Peer Norms and Adolescents’ Experience with Sexual Behavior: Testing an Integrative Model

Research on the role of sex-related Internet use in adolescents’ sexual development has often isolated the Internet and online behaviors from other, offline influencing factors in adolescents’ lives, such as processes in the peer domain. The aim of this study was to test an integrative model explaining how receptive (i.e., use of sexually explicit Internet material [SEIM]) and interactive (i.e., use of social networking sites [SNS]) sex-related online behaviors interrelate with perceived peer norms in predicting adolescents’ experience with sexual behavior. Structural equation modeling on longitudinal data from 1,132 Dutch adolescents (M_age T₁ = 13.95; range 11-17; 52.7% boys) demonstrated concurrent, direct, and indirect effects between sex-related online behaviors, perceived peer norms, and experience with sexual behavior. SEIM use (among boys) and SNS use (among boys and girls) predicted increases in adolescents’ perceptions of peer approval of sexual behavior and/or in their estimates of the numbers of sexually active peers. These perceptions, in turn, predicted increases in adolescents’ level of experience with sexual behavior at the end of the study. Boys’ SNS use also directly predicted increased levels of experience with sexual behavior. These findings highlight the need for multisystemic research and intervention development to promote adolescents’ sexual health.     

Coupled ecological and social dynamics in a forested landscape: the deviation of individual decisions from the social optimum

We present a Markov chain model for land-use dynamics in a forested landscape. This model emphasizes the importance of coupling socioeconomic and ecological processes underlying landscape change. We assume that a forest is composed of many land parcels, each of which is in one of a finite list of land-use states. The land-use state of each land parcel changes stochastically. The transition probability is determined by two processes: the forest succession and the decision of landowners. The landowner tends to choose the land-use state which has a high expected discounted utility, i.e., the sum of the current and the future utilities of the land parcel. Landowners take the likelihood of future landscape changes into account when making decisions. We focus on a three-state model in which forested, agricultural, and abandoned states are considered. The land-use composition at equilibrium was analyzed and compared with the social optimum that maximizes the net benefit of all landowners in a society. We show that when landowners make a myopic choice focused on short-term benefits, their individual decisions tend to push the entire landscape toward an agricultural state even if the forested state represents the highest utility. This land-use composition at equilibrium is very different from the social optimum. A long-term management perspective and an enhanced rate of forest recovery can eliminate the discrepancy.     

A game theoretical model of deforestation in human-environment relationships

We studied a two-person game regarding deforestation in human-environment relationships. Each landowner manages a single land parcel where the state of land-use is forested, agricultural, or abandoned. The landowner has two strategies available: forest conservation and deforestation. The choice of deforestation provides a high return to the landowner, but it degrades the forest ecosystem services produced on a neighboring land parcel managed by a different landowner. Given spatial interactions between the two landowners, each landowner decides which strategy to choose by comparing the expected discounted utility of each strategy. Expected discounted utility is determined by taking into account the current and future utilities to be received, according to the state transition on the two land parcels. The state transition is described by a Markov chain that incorporates a landowner's choice about whether to deforest and the dynamics of agricultural abandonment and forest regeneration. By considering a stationary distribution of the Markov chain for land-use transitions, we derive explicit conditions for Nash equilibrium. We found that a slow regeneration of forests favors mutual cooperation (forest conservation). As the forest regenerates faster, mutual cooperation transforms to double Nash equilibria (mutual cooperation and mutual defection), and finally mutual defection (deforestation) leads to a unique Nash equilibrium. Two different types of social dilemma emerge in our deforestation game. The stag-hunt dilemma is most likely to occur under an unsustainable resource supply, where forest regenerates extremely slowly but agricultural abandonment happens quite rapidly. In contrast, the prisoner's dilemma is likely under a persistent or circulating supply of resources, where forest regenerates rapidly and agricultural abandonment occurs slowly or rapidly. These results show how humans and the environment mutually shape the dilemma structure in forest management, implying that solutions to dilemmas depend on environmental properties.     

You Have My Word: Reciprocity Expectation Modulates Feedback-Related Negativity in the Trust Game

Promise is one of the most powerful tools producing trust and facilitating cooperation, and sticking to the promise is deemed as a key social norm in social interactions. The present study explored the extent to which promise would influence investors’ decision-making in the trust game where promise had no predictive value regarding trustees’ reciprocation. In addition, we examined the neural underpinnings of the investors’ outcome processing related to the trustees’ promise keeping and promise breaking. Consistent with our hypothesis, behavioral results indicated that promise could effectively increase the investment frequency of investors. Electrophysiological results showed that, promise induced larger differentiated-FRN responses to the reward and non-reward discrepancy. Taken together, these results suggested that promise would promote cooperative behavior, while breach of promise would be regarded as a violation of the social norm, corroborating the vital role of non-enforceable commitment in social decision making.     

Coupled ecological-social dynamics in a forested landscape: spatial interactions and information flow

We develop an agent-based model for forest harvesting to study how interactions between neighboring land parcels and the degree of information flow among landowners influence harvesting patterns. We assume a forest is composed of a number of land parcels that are individually managed. Each parcel is either mature forested, just-harvested, or immature forested. The state transition of each parcel is described by a Markov chain that incorporates the successional dynamics of the forest ecosystem and landowners' decisions about harvesting. Landowners decide to cut trees based on the expected discounted utility of forested vs. harvested land. One landowner's decision to cut trees is assumed to cause the degradation of ecosystem services on the downstream forested parcels. We investigated two different scenarios: in a strongly-connected society, landowners are familiar with each other and have full information regarding the behavior of other landowners. In a weakly-connected society, landowners do not communicate and therefore need to make subjective predictions about the behavior of others without adequate information. Regardless of the type of society, we observed that the spatial interaction between management units caused a chain reaction of tree harvesting in the neighborhood even when healthy forested land provided greater utility than harvested land. The harvest rate was higher in a weakly-connected society than that in a strongly-connected society. If landowners employed a long-term perspective, the harvest rate declined, and a more robust forested landscape emerged. Our results highlight the importance of institutional arrangements that encourage a long-term perspective and increased information flow among landowners in order to achieve successful forest management.     

Peer Effects in Unethical Behavior: Standing or Reputation?

Recent empirical evidence shows that working in an unsupervised, isolated situation under competition, can increase dishonest behavior to achieve prestige. However, could working in a common space, in the presence of colleagues affect cheating? Here, we examine how familiar-peer influence, supervision and social incentives affect worker performance and dishonest behavior. First, we show that working in the presence of peers is an effective mechanism to constrain honest/dishonest behavior compared to an isolated work situation (experiment 1). Second, we demonstrate that the mere suspicion of dishonesty from another peer is not enough to affect individual cheating behavior (experiment 2), suggesting that reputation holds great importance in a worker’s self-image acting as a strong social incentives. Third, we show that when the suspicion of dishonesty increases with multiple peers behaving dishonestly, the desire to increase standing is sufficient to nudge individuals’ behavior back to cheating at the same levels as isolated situations (experiment 3).     

Comparison between perfect information and passive–adaptive social learning models of forest harvesting

This paper compares perfect information and passive–adaptive social learning models of forest harvesting using a simple Markov chain model for land-use dynamics. A perfect information model assumes that landowners know true utility values of forest conservation and harvesting. In contrast, a passive–adaptive social learning model assumes that landowners do not know true utility values and they learn these values by their past experiences and by exchanging information with others in a society. We determine conditions under which the same consequences expected from perfect information and passive–adaptive social learning models. We found that the outcome from a perfect information model resembles that from passive–adaptive social learning model only when the perfect information model incorporates little discounting for future values. The stability analysis of landscape dynamics predicts a cyclic overexploitation of forest resources in a passive–adaptive social learning model with short-term memory, while instability of landscapes is never expected in a perfect information model. We discuss the role of discounting the future and discounting the past in the context of forest management.     

Modeling the Complex Impacts of Timber Harvests to Find Optimal Management Regimes for Amazon Tidal Floodplain Forests

At the Amazon estuary, the oldest logging frontier in the Amazon, no studies have comprehensively explored the potential long-term population and yield consequences of multiple timber harvests over time. Matrix population modeling is one way to simulate long-term impacts of tree harvests, but this approach has often ignored common impacts of tree harvests including incidental damage, changes in post-harvest demography, shifts in the distribution of merchantable trees, and shifts in stand composition. We designed a matrix-based forest management model that incorporates these harvest-related impacts so resulting simulations reflect forest stand dynamics under repeated timber harvests as well as the realities of local smallholder timber management systems. Using a wide range of values for management criteria (e.g., length of cutting cycle, minimum cut diameter), we projected the long-term population dynamics and yields of hundreds of timber management regimes in the Amazon estuary, where small-scale, unmechanized logging is an important economic activity. These results were then compared to find optimal stand-level and species-specific sustainable timber management (STM) regimes using a set of timber yield and population growth indicators. Prospects for STM in Amazonian tidal floodplain forests are better than for many other tropical forests. However, generally high stock recovery rates between harvests are due to the comparatively high projected mean annualized yields from fast-growing species that effectively counterbalance the projected yield declines from other species. For Amazonian tidal floodplain forests, national management guidelines provide neither the highest yields nor the highest sustained population growth for species under management. Our research shows that management guidelines specific to a region’s ecological settings can be further refined to consider differences in species demographic responses to repeated harvests. In principle, such fine-tuned management guidelines could make management more attractive, thus bridging the currently prevalent gap between tropical timber management practice and regulation.     

The genetics of shortleaf pine (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pinus echinata</Emphasis> mill.) with implications for restoration and management

Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) is an important commercial timber resource and forest ecosystem component in the southeastern USA. The species occurs in mainly drier sites as an early- to mid-successional species, is fire-adapted, and it plays an important role in the fire ecology of the region. However, shortleaf pine genetics are not well-studied, especially in this era of molecular genetics and genomics. Most genetics research about the species has focused on provenance testing. Generally, shortleaf pine performs well in colder areas, when compared to loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.), a close relative, which is faster growing and the most common plantation species in the region. Though not as advanced in genetic improvement as loblolly pine, tree breeders have improved shortleaf pine in one to two generations of selection, and diverse, genetically improved shortleaf pine materials are available to foresters and landowners throughout the southeastern USA. Researchers have also studied the genetic variation of shortleaf pine using various molecular markers and have found that shortleaf pine is generally a prolific outcrosser, a trait it shares with other non-isolated members of the family Pinaceae. In recent years, however, it has shared less genetic material across long ranges, probably because of habitat fragmentation. Various anthropogenic factors also affect shortleaf pine’s future, as recent studies show that shortleaf pine introgression with loblolly pine puts the species—and the resiliency of southeastern forests—at risk. Importantly, fire exclusion is a likely cause of the increase in introgression. Herein, we provide further details and up-to-date genetic information and resources for foresters and ecologists interested in the restoration and management of shortleaf pine.     

Genetic Influences Are Virtually Absent for Trust

Over the past decades, numerous twin studies have revealed moderate to high heritability estimates for individual differences in a wide range of human traits, including cognitive ability, psychiatric disorders, and personality traits. Even factors that are generally believed to be environmental in nature have been shown to be under genetic control, albeit modest. Is such heritability also present in social traits that are conceptualized as causes and consequences of social interactions or in other ways strongly shaped by behavior of other people? Here we examine a population-based sample of 1,012 twins and relatives. We show that the genetic influence on generalized trust in other people (trust-in-others: h² = 5%, ns), and beliefs regarding other people’s trust in the self (trust-in-self: h² = 13%, ns), is virtually absent. As test-retest reliability for both scales were found to be moderate or high (r = .76 and r = .53, respectively) in an independent sample, we conclude that all variance in trust is likely to be accounted for by non-shared environmental influences. We show that, relative to cognitive abilities, psychiatric disorders, and classic personality variables, genetic influences are smaller for trust, and propose that experiences with or observations of the behavior of other people shape trust more strongly than other traits.     

Effects of Cognitive Load on Trusting Behavior – An Experiment Using the Trust Game

Last decades have witnessed a progressing decline of social trust, which has been predominantly linked to worsening economic conditions and increasing social inequality. In the present research we propose a different type of explanation for the observed decline – cognitive load related to technological development and the accelerating pace of modern life. In an experimental study participants played the trust game while performing one of two different secondary tasks – listening to a disturbing noise or memorizing a sequence of characters – or with no additional task in the control condition. Results show that in both cognitive load conditions participants expressed significantly less trust in the trust game than in case of no cognitive load. Additionally, when cognitive resources were limited, participants’ behavior was more impulsive than when their resources were fully available.     

Using Multiscale Spatial Models to Assess Potential Surrogate Habitat for an Imperiled Reptile

In evaluating conservation and management options for species, practitioners might consider surrogate habitats at multiple scales when estimating available habitat or modeling species’ potential distributions based on suitable habitats, especially when native environments are rare. Species’ dependence on surrogates likely increases as optimal habitat is degraded and lost due to anthropogenic landscape change, and thus surrogate habitats may be vital for an imperiled species’ survival in highly modified landscapes. We used spatial habitat models to examine a potential surrogate habitat for an imperiled ambush predator (eastern diamondback rattlesnake, Crotalus adamanteus; EDB) at two scales. The EDB is an apex predator indigenous to imperiled longleaf pine ecosystems (Pinus palustris) of the southeastern United States. Loss of native open-canopy pine savannas and woodlands has been suggested as the principal cause of the species’ extensive decline. We examined EDB habitat selection in the Coastal Plain tidewater region to evaluate the role of marsh as a potential surrogate habitat and to further quantify the species’ habitat requirements at two scales: home range (HR) and within the home range (WHR). We studied EDBs using radiotelemetry and employed an information-theoretic approach and logistic regression to model habitat selection as use vs. availability. We failed to detect a positive association with marsh as a surrogate habitat at the HR scale; rather, EDBs exhibited significantly negative associations with all landscape patches except pine savanna. Within home range selection was characterized by a negative association with forest and a positive association with ground cover, which suggests that EDBs may use surrogate habitats of similar structure, including marsh, within their home ranges. While our HR analysis did not support tidal marsh as a surrogate habitat, marsh may still provide resources for EDBs at smaller scales.     

Preschool Children’s Behavioral Tendency toward Social Indirect Reciprocity

Social indirect reciprocity seems to be crucial in enabling large-scale cooperative networks among genetically unrelated individuals in humans. However, there are relatively few studies on social indirect reciprocity in children compared to adults. Investigating whether young children have a behavioral tendency toward social indirect reciprocity will help us understand how and when the fundamental ability to form cooperative relationships among adults is acquired. Using naturalistic observation at a nursery school, this study examined whether 5- to 6-year-olds show a behavioral tendency to engage in social indirect reciprocity in response to their peers’ prosocial behavior toward a third party. The results revealed that bystander children tended to display prosocial behavior toward their peers more frequently after observing these peers’ prosocial behavior toward third-party peers, compared with control situations; this suggests that 5- to 6-year-olds may have an essential behavioral tendency to establish social indirect reciprocity when interacting with peers in their daily lives. In addition, bystanders tended to display affiliative behavior after observing focal children’s prosocial behavior. In other words, observing peers’ prosocial behavior toward third-party peers evoked bystanders’ positive emotions toward the helpers. Considering both the present results and previous findings, we speculate that in preschoolers, such positive emotions might mediate the increase in the bystander’s prosocial behavior toward the helper. In addition, an intuitional emotional process plays an important role in the preschooler’s behavioral tendency toward social indirect reciprocity in natural interactions with peers.     

Early Social Experience Predicts Referential Communicative Adjustments in Five-Year-Old Children

A large body of work has focused on children’s ability to attribute mental states to other people, and whether these abilities are influenced by the extent and nature of children’s social interactions. However, it remains largely unknown which developmental factors shape children’s ability to influence the mental states of others. Building on the suggestion that collaborative experiences early in life might be crucial for the emergence of mental coordination abilities, here we assess the relative contribution of social exposure to familial and non-familial agents on children’s communicative adjustments to their mental model of an addressee (‘audience design’). During an online interactive game, five-year-olds spontaneously organized their non-verbal communicative behaviors according to their beliefs about an interlocutor. The magnitude of these communicative adjustments was predicted by the time spent at daycare, from birth until four years of age, over and above effects of familial social environment. These results suggest that the degree of non-familial social interaction early in life modulates the influence that children’s beliefs have on their referential communicative behavior.     

Observing others give & take: A computational account of bystanders’ feelings and actions

Social interactions influence people’s feelings and behavior. Here, we propose that a person’s well-being is influenced not only by interactions they experience themselves, but also by those they observe. In particular, we test and quantify the influence of observed selfishness and observed inequality on a bystanders’ feelings and non-costly punishment decisions. We developed computational models that relate others’ (un)selfish acts to observers’ emotional reactions and punishment decisions. These characterize the rules by which others’ interactions are transformed into bystanders’ reactions, and successfully predict those reactions in out-of-sample participants. The models highlight the impact of two social values—‘selfishness aversion’ and ‘inequality aversion’. As for the latter we find that even small violations from perfect equality have a disproportionately large impact on feelings and punishment. In this age of internet and social media we constantly observe others’ online interactions, in addition to in-person interactions. Quantifying the consequences of such observations is important for predicting their impact on society.     

Reputation,a universal currency for human social interactions

Decision rules of reciprocity include ‘I help those who helped me’ (direct reciprocity) and ‘I help those who have helped others’ (indirect reciprocity), i.e. I help those who have a reputation to care for others. A person''s reputation is a score that members of a social group update whenever they see the person interacting or hear at best multiple gossip about the person''s social interactions. Reputation is the current standing the person has gained from previous investments or refusal of investments in helping others. Is he a good guy, can I trust him or should I better avoid him as a social partner? A good reputation pays off by attracting help from others, even from strangers or members from another group, if the recipient''s reputation is known. Any costly investment in others, i.e. direct help, donations to charity, investment in averting climate change, etc. increases a person''s reputation. I shall argue and illustrate with examples that a person''s known reputation functions like money that can be used whenever the person needs help. Whenever possible I will present tests of predictions of evolutionary theory, i.e. fitness maximizing strategies, mostly by economic experiments with humans.     

Do Social Networks Influence Small-Scale Fishermen’s Enforcement of Sea Tenure?

Resource systems with enforced rules and strong monitoring systems typically have more predictable resource abundance, which can confer economic and social benefits to local communities. Co-management regimes demonstrate better social and ecological outcomes, but require an active role by community members in management activities, such as monitoring and enforcement. Previous work has emphasized understanding what makes fishermen comply with rules. This research takes a different approach to understand what influences an individual to enforce rules, particularly sea tenure. We conducted interviews and used multiple regression and Akaike’s Information Criteria model selection to evaluate the effect of social networks, food security, recent catch success, fisherman’s age and personal gear investment on individual’s enforcement of sea tenure. We found that fishermen’s enforcement of sea tenure declined between the two time periods measured and that social networks, age, food security, and changes in gear investment explained enforcement behavior across three different communities on Nicaragua’s Atlantic Coast, an area undergoing rapid globalization.     

Options for biodiversity conservation in managed forest landscapes of multiple ownerships in Oregon and Washington,USA

We examine existing and developing approaches to balance biodiversity conservation and timber production with the changing conservation roles of federal and nonfederal forest land ownerships in the US Pacific Northwest. At landscape scales, implementation of the reserve-matrix approach of the federal Northwest Forest Plan in 1994 was followed by proposals of alternative designs to better integrate disturbance regimes or to conserve biodiversity in landscapes of predominantly young forests through active management without reserves. At stand scales, landowners can improve habitat heterogeneity through a host of conventional and alternative silvicultural techniques. There are no state rules that explicitly require biodiversity conservation on nonfederal lands in the region. However, state forest practices rules require retention of structural legacies to enhance habitat complexity and establishment of riparian management areas to conserve aquatic ecosystems. Habitat Conservation Plans (HCPs) under the US Endangered Species Act provide regulatory incentives for nonfederal landowners to protect threatened and endangered species. A state-wide programmatic HCP has recently emerged as a multi-species conservation approach on nonfederal lands. Among voluntary incentives, the Forest Stewardship Council certification comprehensively addresses fundamental elements of biodiversity conservation; however, its tough conservation requirements may limit its coverage to relatively small land areas. Future changes in landscape management strategies on federal lands may occur without coordination with nonfederal landowners because of the differences in regulatory and voluntary incentives between ownerships. This raises concerns when potentially reduced protections on federal lands are proposed, and the capacity of the remaining landscape to compensate has been degraded.