Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Decision-making in the Face of Uncertainty: Examining the Interplay between Social Relations and Loss Aversion in Small-Scale Fishing Communities in Jamaica

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  • Decision-making is a highly complex process influenced by the values, attitudes, and cognitive biases of the decision-maker. The classical model of decision-making fails to fully incorporate how decisions are made in situations of uncertainty, where having complete knowledge of all possible outcomes and alternatives is not always possible. In highly uncertain contexts, people tend to draw on a range of both monetary and non-monetary motivations. This dissertation seeks to explore how fishers develop decision-making strategies to respond and adapt to the current challenges in small-scale fisheries that have created an uncertain decision context. I used an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from theories in sociology and behavioral economics to explore this research aim with small-scale fishers in Jamaica. The majority of research in small-scale fisheries decision-making has focused on the monetary drivers of fishers’ decisions. This dissertation focuses primarily on the role non-monetary aspects of fishers’ livelihood play in their decision-making processes. The second chapter presents a synthesis of existing literature to discuss how a broader conceptualization of drivers of decision-making to include non-monetary assets may supplement existing conventional approaches to fisheries policies. Using a network approach, the third chapter explores how the structural and relational properties of social networks may facilitate information-sharing that is critical for decision-making. Using the ego-networks of 353 small-scale fishers, this chapter tested the relationship between network prominence and fishing roles (captains versus other fishing actors) and the role of trust and influence as tie attributes in the information shared by fishing actors. The results showed that fishing captains were not more likely to hold prominent positions within the information-sharing networks than other crew members. The study further found inconsistent significant differences in the role of trust and influence as tie attributes in the information shared by boat captains and other fishing actors. Combined, these findings suggest that the prominence of actors may not be as important for information sharing as the perception that the information shared is influential and trustworthy. In the fourth chapter, I explored possible variations in fishers’ loss aversion when material and non-material valued assets of their livelihoods are threatened. Loss aversion is the psychological predisposition to avoid or minimize potential losses, even when faced with substantial gains. Using a structured questionnaire and choice experiment of 397 fishers, the study found that fishers were moderately more loss averse when information-sharing opportunities were threatened. The study demonstrates that fishers did not experience greater loss aversion when only monetary assets were threatened. Rather, the study found that loss aversion was greater when both monetary and non-monetary assets were threatened. Taken together, this dissertation underscores the role and importance of non-monetary components of fishers’ decisions in how they navigate uncertainties within small-scale fisheries. The interdisciplinary field of decision science may aid in understanding the importance of the weight and value fishers place on different aspects of their social relations. Furthermore, it may offer resource managers the opportunity to obtain a deeper understanding of the rationale behind fishers' behaviors to support the development of sustainable marine policies.
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  • Pending Publication
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  • 2021-11-10 to 2024-01-11

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