The Goldilocks Solution: Exploring the Relationship between Trust and Participation in Resource Management within the New Zealand Commercial Rock Lobster Fishery

Our understanding of the role natural resource users, and the governing institutions they create, has grown considerably in recent years. At the same time, our understanding of the role of trust in human interactions continues to grow. We use the case of New Zealand rock lobster (jasus edwardsii and Jasus verrauxi) to ask the question “What is the role of trust in an individual's decision to participate in natural resource management institutions?” Using data from a survey of constituents of the commercial rock lobster fishery, our analysis shows an inverted “U” relationship between trust and participation. We suggest that this may be described as a “Goldilocks solution” in which having both too much and too little trust is problematic; but a healthy level of is “just right.” Theoretical and policy implications of these findings and directions for future research are explored.     

Estimation of Spatio-Temporal Correlations of Prehistoric Population and Vegetation in North America

We discuss a simple methodology to enable a statistical comparison of human population with the vegetation of North America over the past 13,000 years. Nonparametric kernel methods are applied for temporal and spatial smoothing of point data obtained from the Neotoma Paleoecology Database and the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database, which results in sequences of maps showing the development of population and different plant taxa during the Holocene. The estimation of smooth spatial and spatio-temporal cross-correlation functions is proposed in order to detect relationships between population and vegetation in fixed time intervals. Furthermore, the effects of varying environment on demographic changes as well as potential impacts of populations on plant taxa over time are analyzed. Pointwise confidence bands for cross-correlation functions are computed and a robustness analysis is performed to assess the significance of obtained results. Considering the example of oak, an interpretation of our results for eastern North America shows the value of this methodology.