University of Canterbury, School of Biological Sciences, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, 8140, New Zealand.
Manaaki Whenua-Landcare Research, PO Box 69040, Lincoln, 7640, New Zealand.
Sci Rep. 2021 May 7;11(1):9768. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-89143-1.
Understanding the function of social networks can make a critical contribution to achieving desirable environmental outcomes. Social-ecological systems are complex, adaptive systems in which environmental decision makers adapt to a changing social and ecological context. However, it remains unclear how multiple social influences interact with environmental feedbacks to generate environmental outcomes. Based on national-scale survey data and a social-ecological agent-based model in the context of voluntary private land conservation, our results suggest that social influences can operate synergistically or antagonistically, thereby enabling behaviors to spread by two or more mechanisms that amplify each other's effects. Furthermore, information through social networks may indirectly affect and respond to isolated individuals through environmental change. The interplay of social influences can, therefore, explain the success or failure of conservation outcomes emerging from collective behavior. To understand the capacity of social influence to generate environmental outcomes, social networks must not be seen as 'closed systems'; rather, the outcomes of environmental interventions depend on feedbacks between the environment and different components of the social system.
了解社交网络的功能可以为实现理想的环境成果做出重要贡献。社会-生态系统是复杂的自适应系统，环境决策者在其中适应不断变化的社会和生态环境。然而，目前尚不清楚多种社会影响如何与环境反馈相互作用，从而产生环境成果。基于全国范围内的调查数据和自愿私人土地保护背景下的社会-生态代理模型，我们的研究结果表明，社会影响可以协同或拮抗作用，从而使行为通过两种或更多相互增强效果的机制传播。此外，通过社交网络传递的信息也可能通过环境变化间接影响和响应孤立的个体。因此，社会影响的相互作用可以解释源于集体行为的保护成果的成败。为了了解社会影响力产生环境成果的能力，社交网络绝不能被视为“封闭系统”；相反，环境干预的结果取决于环境与社会系统不同组成部分之间的反馈。
