The Impact Of Social Capital On Collective Action

Common land resources in rural district are typical collective goods that need collective action But whether a group of individuals would pursue collective goals as personal goals is under question. Social capital theory represented that a group may achieve self-governance of collective action by Construct social capital,because people are not atomized individuals, they make contact with other person, so their actions and ideas will be affected by the shared culture of living groups.Although most of the foreign study confirmed the the positive impact of social capital to collective action, but the understanding of social capital have blind spots. There is debate about the component of social capital,whether social capital is the network or network resources, if both, both compinents how to impact collective action?It need more convincing proof. In this study, author select three villages in central China which exist self-governance of common use resources, through comparative and empirical case study.try to investigated the characteristics and factors of social capital in rural areas,try to find out the mechanism of social capital to cellective action. On the one hand the study will increase understanding of characteristics of social capital in China's rural, on the other hand it will enhance understanding of social capital to common land resource governance.the third, enhance understanding of social capitals' concept and external impact factors, offer some suggestions on how to build and impact rural social capital.the main contents and conclusions of the study stated the following:The first content:establish theoretical framework of social capital to colletive action.Borrow ideas from the pattern of System interior analysis,establish theoretical framework of social capital to colletive action.Start with the thought of new-structuralist,the papar establish the conceptual framework of collective social capital and collective action dimensions (including generaate. pattern, performance). establish the correlation analysis of collective social capital to collective action.According to the thought of new Individualism and the macro-micro-macro of research ideas, in view of the individual options are affected,the paper build framework and model of social capital affecting the individual's choice of action.The second content:take three village in Liuyang City. Hunan Province as a case study,try to find characteristics of social capital and its' relationship with common land resources self-governance at the same time investigate the external factors of social capital.Investigate the characteristics of collective social capital through five indicators. Five indicators are collective network structure, network quality, number and size of the formal organization in network, the level of collective sharing norms embedded in the network, the effectiveness of formal organization, the first three indicators are to measure the characteristics of collective network, the latter two indicators are to measure the embedded resources of collective network,Through horizontal comparison, author find one village have a typical heterogeneous instability loose network structure, in addition to network quality components have an advantage.The other two villages are homogeneous stability compact network structure,the sharing norms are rich. Further analysis found that, whether the village have the interaction of public space, regular opportunities for interaction, whether the villagers have more interaction time, strong demand for village interaction are factors effects social capital characteristics.The government which often have an impact on these factors thus indirectly affect the village's social capital, in a certain extent the government imposed many unscientific demolition lead to one village become loose network.Investigate how collective social capital affects variable dimension of land use collective action (including generate, pattern, performance). The qualitative study found that homogeneous and stability network structure is good to resource governence; the high-quality network can provide information and policy, which have a positive impact on the generat, pattern and performance of land resource governance. Formal organizations tend to be more open in homogeneous stability network structure, but not certain in the loose network community.The research indicating that in a village with loose network structure, government action should be more careful, and construction of formal organization should be more cautious. In a village with homogeneous and stability network structur,government should provide some opportunities for villagers' interaction.The third content:experience study of farmers' behavior in land resource governance.The study introducing five variables common to refer to social capital of rural households, including network size, network quality, network support, the validity of the collective formal organization, the level of informal norms.Found except "network quality" variables, Other variables are strongly related. Pass analysis showed that the network size variable and network support variable have a strong influence, This shows that to some extent,the network decision or affect the status of network resources. In addition, farmers who have different character of network have different evaluation to collective norms, indicating the individual's social capital have association with collective social capital. Therefore, social capital should defined as resources embedded in the network.In order to minimize the impact of collinearity. five variables of social capital reduce into three factors.and author build social capital index.The social capital index, household's socio-economic characteristics variables, the frequency of farmers involved in the daily activities variables, the farmers awareness of resource governance variable are included into the analysis of household behavior model, through the relevant test,found that social capital index, the importance of control variables, the level of households own economic variables affected farmers in the common land resource governance participation. This shows that the economy factors have contribute on the villagers participate in the village resources governance, but economic factors are not important as factors of social capital, which meant that the villagers in rural areas is not atomized rational economic being, but always subject to network. Through the analysis for the loose heterogeneous networks showed that social capital is the only variable impact the villagers action.Lastly, analyze the factors may impact social capital. through the relevant test,Author found that the activity variables and the economic variables affected social capital index. the analysis for the loose heterogeneous networks showed that economic imcome is the only variable impact social capital index.it means government should improve working poor to construct the community's social capital.