Social Inequality and Collective Efficacy in Community-Based Natural Resource Management

Abstract

"We explore the impact of social structure such as caste on social capital formation using data from community forest user groups from Nepal. We also provide a study of the impact of social capital on resource extraction. We found that upper caste and more educated households do participate more in social capital formation compared to their less privileged counterparts. Households from higher caste are engaging more in the collective action. Our results also suggest that increasing the level of participation of lower caste households in community level activities would facilitate the accumulation of village social capital. Further, the analysis revealed that the higher stocks of social capital are associated with lower levels of resource exploitation."