86 Mincey and Vogt: Watering Strategy, Collective Action, and Neighborhood-Planted Trees of tree planting and management may enhance the success of tree-planting projects (i.e., higher tree survival rates), and may be associated with citizen involvement in other forms of collective action or citizen groups, such as neighborhood associations. Collective Action and Institutions Successful collective action depends largely upon institutions—the rules, norms, or strategies is expected that neighborhoods that engage in col- lective tree-planting and maintenance activities (a form of collective natural resource management) and establish rules, monitoring, and sanction- ing related to those shared responsibilities will be more accountable to one another and therefore may produce more successful tree-planting projects. that groups use to structure repeated behavior (Ostrom 2005). Without institutions, collective action is rela- tively costly for individuals in terms of the time and effort required to come to agreement and to engage in mutually agreed-upon actions. Institutional mecha- nisms change the costs and benefits for individuals facing collective action problems, such as free riding (where individuals “cheat,” consuming more than or paying less than their fair share of a com- mon resource). Institutions can be used to impose sanctions on free riders such that the costs of cheat- ing outweigh the perceived benefits (Ostrom 2005). A number of institutional mechanisms have been associated with sustainable outcomes in collec- tive natural resource management and were speci- fied in the Design Principles (Ostrom 1990; Cox et al. 2010). These institutional characteristics were found in various forms and combinations among sustainable resource communities (including fish- eries, forests, and irrigation systems) studied by Ostrom (1990). For example, the Design Principles point to the relevance of locally defined rules, the clarity of resource boundaries and responsibilities, and effective monitoring and sanctioning for sus- tainable collective natural resource management. Ostrom (1990) concluded that when individuals working together are able to establish such institu- tions about shared responsibilities and have means to monitor and sanction those that fail to conform to rules, they are more accountable to one another and accomplish more than individuals who do not (Ostrom et al. 1994). While not yet applied to urban forest management, these principles have emerged in recent studies related to urban vegetation man- agement; for example, Robbins and Sharpe (2003) report that upholding local aesthetic norms and the fear of neighborhood sanctions are key drivers to individual households’ front yard maintenance that produce collective (neighborhood) results. Thus, given the Design Principles and related evidence, it ©2014 International Society of Arboriculture Collective Action and Social Capital Successful collective action through institutional conformance has been linked to the existence of so- cial capital both within and across groups (Ostrom 1996; Putnam 2000; Adger 2003). Putnam (2000, p. 19) discusses “social capital” and defines it as it was used in the present study: “social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them.” Social capital is related to collec- tive action because “social capital allows citizens to resolve collective problems more easily,” because “where people are trusting and trustworthy, and where they are subject to repeated interactions with fellow citizens, everyday business and social trans- actions are less costly” (Putnam 2000, p. 288). Fur- ther, Poteete et al. (2010, pp. 226–227) link trust and institutional conformance: “At the core of an evolv- ing theoretical explanation of successful . . . col- lective action is the internal link between the trust among participants . . . and the increased probability that all participants will use reciprocity norms”; “trust and reciprocity are mutually reinforcing.” Sociologists debate the conflation of social capital with individual-level capital; and like Putnam (2000), researchers of the current study acknowledge that social capital is related to the idea of civic virtue—the individual-level construct of altruism or action for the general welfare of society. Putnam (2000, p. 19) states, “civic virtue is most powerful when embed- ded in a dense network of reciprocal social rela- tions,” but that “a society of many virtues but isolated individuals is not necessarily rich in social capital”; nor, therefore, collective action. Given the nature of the study’s focus—neighborhood-managed tree planting and management requiring collective deci- sion making and institutional design—the concept of social capital and its role in institutional confor- mance for successful collective action is appropriate. No systematic, quantitative research has been done to evaluate urban tree-planting programs from a social outcomes perspective other than Sommer
March 2014
| Title Name |
Pages |
Delete |
Url |
| Empty |
Search Text Block
Page #page_num
#doc_title
Hi $receivername|$receiveremail,
$sendername|$senderemail wrote these comments for you:
$message
$sendername|$senderemail would like for you to view the following digital edition.
Please click on the page below to be directed to the digital edition:
$thumbnail$pagenum
$link$pagenum
Your form submission was a success. You will be contacted by Washington Gas with follow-up information regarding your request.
This process might take longer please wait
