Evaluating Collective Action for Effective Land Policy Reform in Developing Country Contexts: The Construction and Validation of Dimensions and Indicators

Abstract

Although land reform can be motivated by different policy objectives, it always involves the participation of many actors. Insights from New Institutional Economics suggest that individual interests that are not aligned with collective interests tend to undermine the goals of reform. This study provides a viable framework and measures for social capital, trust, and cooperation performance and their interrelationships to compensate for the existing separate analysis of these three factors and their rare application in achieving goals of collective action. We also build a strong and deepening theoretical foundation for the indicator design, providing a rich representation of social capital, trust, and cooperation performance. After being presented with variables, indicators are used to further elaborate on the variables to enhance the richness and science of the indicator design. The validation results of indicators from 12 experts and 223 respondents are to yield an average reliable coefficient as a positive sign of reliability and validity of the evaluation process with Kendall’s Co-efficient of Concordance (W) through R programming. This study emphasizes the importance of collective action for sustainable land use and effective land policy reform, a topic that remains underrepresented in most land reform analyses.