This study was conducted in two rural villages in South Africa with the purpose of investigating the safety-net role of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). The use of NTFPs as a safety-net is reported as a common feature of rural livelihoods however empirical data supporting this function is limited. Therefore, policy makers and land-use planners underappreciate the probable role and consequent value of the safety-net function. The findings show that poor, rural households are vulnerable to a range of risks. Over a two year period 100% of households reported experiencing crises including unexpected idiosyncratic risks (e.g. illness, retrenchment, crop failure and death) as well as expected expenses and periods of vulnerability (e.g. the payment of school fees and seasonal crop shortfalls). Households are prone to these risks irrespective of wealth or gender of the de jure household head. To secure their livelihoods households in both villages rely on a variety of livelihood strategies including waged labour (53%), self-employment (30%), government grants (60%), arable agriculture (56%), animal husbandry (64%) and the use (100%) and sale (22%) of NTFPs. In terms of the proportion of households involved, the findings suggest land-based strategies make an important contribution. Formal employment and old-age pensions distinguish wealthy households from poor and allow for investments in assets and saving schemes (62%). In response to the risks experienced households employed a variety of coping strategies. Generally the most commonly used strategies were kinship (85%), reduced household spending (72%), changes to food consumption and saving (72%) and relying on NTFPs (70%). Kinship and NTFPs show no differences for wealth or gender of the de jure household head. The remaining strategies are influenced by wealth. The use of NTFPs as a safety-net manifested predominantly through the increased use of products, then the substitution of commercial goods by NTFPs and lastly through the sale. Of those using NTFPs as a rural safety-net 41.4% used of wild foods, 40% used medicinal plants, 25.7% substituted paraffin with fuelwood, 10% sold fuelwood and 8.6% sold other products.

In this study, rural households livelihood strategies in communities around Fort Hare and Middle Drift dairy projects in the Nkonkobe Municipality are explored from a household perspective. Rural communities around Fort Hare and Middle Drift dairy projects in Eastern Cape, South Africa are found choosing a multiple of livelihood portfolios that are linked to dairy project activities to increase food, generate income, and safeguard against risks and shocks. The dairy projects in rural areas can reduced the problem of shrinking livelihood options in rural areas were most of the households are relying on government grants which has characterised the rural areas with long queues during month ends. The main objectives of this study are, to assess whether the rural dairy projects set goals are being achieved; to identify dominant livelihood strategies of households living around dairy projects in Eastern Cape Province, South Africa and to identify determinant factors influencing rural households around dairy projects to choose certain livelihood strategies that improve their welfare. The study analysed socio-economic survey data that had been collected from households in six rural villages in Nkonkobe Municipality surrounding the Fort Hare and Middle drift dairy projects. The stratified and random sampling method was used. The descriptive analysis comparing the livelihood portfolios’ in the six rural villages around Fort hare and Middle Drift dairy projects has revealed that there is an increasingly important role of the non-farm economy in the area (income from activities not linked to farming) as compared to farming, non-labour (income from remittances and government grants) and non-farm activities that are combined with farming (non-farm and farming activities). The multinomial logistic regression model revealed, with respect to the household variables, social-economic and institutional related variables as some of the barriers faced by poor households in rural areas sharing boundaries with rural dairy projects to enter into various livelihood strategies. Results from this study outlined that rural communities around dairy projects do not rely much on one livelihood pathway but they link multiple strategies together to improve their standard of living. The study, therefore, conclude that rural dairy projects with activities that are complementing with rural livelihood pathways available can be trusted as a reliable and sustainable livelihood source to reduce poverty in communities which share boundaries with rural dairy projects.

Thesis (MDF)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study is on the impact of cooperative societies on capital formation using a case study of selected cooperatives in Kwazulu Natal province of South Africa. The study is a novel empirical investigation in that focuses on impact of cooperative societies financing on members and how that may translate into significant increase in household incomes. The study assess and evaluates the roles played by cooperative societies’ financing and loans services on members’ economic condition particular their business expansion, profitability and later on improvements in household incomes. Using focus group discussion and questionnaire, the study uncovers the activities of cooperative societies located in both urban and rural communities within KZN Province. The study provides some evidence on the importance of leaving conditions after member access to cheap and affordable loans and provides some insights into the development of rural businesses, how complex they are, and how they require more input than just the financing received through cooperative loans as a final end. It also breaks new ground in informal cooperative operations, community improvement and rural finance research by providing a peculiarity between standard of living and quality of life variables in measuring and determining the economic condition of rural livelihoods and the production of circle of New Institutional Economics theory that the role of cooperatives to the members involve financial capital, physical capital and social capital which are interrelated. This serves to properly distinguish and appropriately identify the roles of cooperative societies in rural finance to increase in household income, ownership of assets and acquisition of enterprise assets. However, the study reveals that access to funds and participation in the cooperative does not lead to enterprise profitability, thus less capital accumulation while rural financial needs are more accessible from cooperatives than other sources. From its findings, this study identified and discussed potential areas for the improvement of cooperative societies that could be of benefit to any urban and rural finance providers and the cooperative members.

A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Science, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfilment of requirements for the degree of Master of Science. Johannesburg, 2016. / Environmental income in rural socio-ecological systems consists of the monetary and non-monetary value derived by people from non-agricultural ecosystem goods and services that are sourced from wild or uncultivated natural systems. This environmental income forms an important part of rural households' diversified livelihood income portfolios and includes resources like fuelwood, herbs, fruits, game, medicinal plants and other materials that are used for clothing, shelter, arts and crafts. Rural households also depend on income from two other land-based income streams, crop farming and livestock husbandry, and off-farm activities income stream, which includes grants and wages, for both consumption and cash generation. While rural livelihoods are becoming increasingly reliant on off-farm income, land-based livelihood income streams (including environmental income) still play an important supplementary role, especially to satisfy subsistence needs. Past studies in the developing world have quantified livelihood incomes and have often associated these income values to the socio-economic characteristics of households. However, neither do these studies examine the different livelihood income streams collectively as a portfolio, nor do they sufficiently account for and create understanding around the correlations within the suites of influencing factors. Livelihoods are often analysed using frameworks that are used to understand households' livelihood income portfolios, especially their environmental income dependencies, in relation to influencing factors. These frameworks can be useful tools to gain a quantitative understanding of households’ livelihood income portfolios. This study aimed to quantify and understand the contribution of environmental income to rural households as part of their diversified livelihood portfolios and relate these livelihood portfolios to household socio-economic characteristics and adopted livelihood strategies using the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) framework. Interviews were conducted during 2010 in 590 households spread across nine villages in the Bushbuckridge region, Mpumalanga, South Africa. The interviews focussed on the quantification of four livelihood income streams — environmental, livestock, crops and off-farm. These income streams were assessed at three points of assessment (POAs) in the livelihood income chain — the initial, primary income value into the household, the value used for household consumption, and the amount of cash generated. Livelihood incomes were analysed using summary statistics, frequency distributions and ordinations. These were used to gauge the value of these incomes to individual households as well as to the system as a whole, in both absolute terms and relative to each other. Ordinations were then used to explore the relationships between variables within the suite of household socio-economic characteristics and within the suite of adopted household livelihood strategies, and finally incorporating both. Lastly, the proportional environmental income dependencies of households were explored using global fractional logit generalised linear models (GLMs). The models first included the socio-economic characteristics as explanatory variables, and then the adopted livelihood strategies. Almost all households used the environmental, crop and off-farm income streams for primary income and consumption, with the primary income from off-farm activities being in the form of cash generation. In contrast, less than 12% of households were involved in the primary collection and consumption of livestock income. In general, fewer households were involved in the cash generation from the land-based livelihood income streams. However, these sellers represented a larger fraction of users for the livestock income stream then when compared to the other two land-based income streams. While livestock income was used less frequently than the other two land-based income streams, it was comparatively as valuable as the off-farm income stream to its users. Overall, absolute changes in the correlated land-based income streams were not related to the off-farm income streams. Relative variation in livestock primary income was related to the relative variation in primary income values from off-farm activities. Relative variation in the crops and environmental cash generation was related to corresponding cash generation values from off-farm activities. Whether the livelihood incomes were examined for primary income, consumption or cash generation, the worth of the different livelihoods were valued differently to the socio-ecological system as a whole compared to their value to households that were involved in those activities, and their value to individuals within households. The collective variations at all POAs of the land-based strategies were associated with different sets of household socio-economic characteristics and adopted livelihood strategies, compared to the sets that were associated with the off-farm livelihood income stream. Factors that were associated with an income stream at one POA did not necessarily have the same association at the other POAs. The choice of adopted livelihood strategies reduces the need to understand and account for all factors that influences the translation of different types of capital, which includes household socio-economic characteristics, into livelihood incomes. This simplified connection is crucial to standardising and creating models that can be put into practice at all POAs within the livelihood chain in these socio-ecological systems. Furthermore, proportional environmental income dependencies can be useful for evaluating how the worth of environmental income is related quantitatively to influencing factors. However, many of the dynamics between influencing factors and the income streams that contribute to environmental income stream are not captured. The methodological approach used in this study in analysing the livelihoods of households in the Bushbuckridge region provides a standardised framework of analysis. The quantification of the livelihood data in common monetary units at the three different POAs of primary income, household consumption and cash generation, allows the analysis to be expanded to different platforms of understanding. The collective understanding of the variation between the different income streams can be expanded to understand the worth of these income streams to households and individuals within these households, as well as to understand the worth of these income streams to the socio-ecological system as a whole. When combining the collective understanding of the income portfolios at the different POAs with a collective understanding of the suite of household socio-economic characteristics or with a collective understanding of the suite of adopted livelihood strategies, a platform for understanding the dynamics within livelihoods is created. This has potential for creating workable predictive models of environmental income dependency in these systems, especially using the adopted livelihood strategies. The results of this dissertation also raise caution that analyses of these socio-ecological systems needs to be interpreted at all POAs simultaneously with the collective understanding of the links between incomes and socio-economic characteristics, and with the links between incomes and adopted livelihood strategies. There is more value during strategic planning in asking how to encourage a set of adopted livelihood strategies that are associated with the desired dependencies than asking which socio-economic household factors are likely to result in said dependencies. Policy intervention in the area that is aimed at increasing households' dependence on land-based activities needs to differentiate whether it will be encouraging the subsistence sourcing and consumption of resources, or will it encourage the cash generation from these income streams. Particular attention needs to be paid as to which households will be addressed. It will be wiser to implement some interventions across all households and rather focus other interventions on a few more involved households. / LG2017

Through collaborative monitoring and case study comparison, this thesis explores conceptual and methodological approaches to monitoring transitions toward adaptive co-management. In so doing, a number of knowledge gaps are addressed. Firstly, conceptual and methodological frameworks are developed for monitoring transitions toward adaptive co-management. Secondly, a conceptual and practical approach to monitoring the processes of collaboration and learning is developed and tested. Thirdly, a conceptual and practical approach to monitoring the governance outcomes of adaptive co-management is developed and tested. Fourthly, a conceptual and practical approach to monitoring the livelihood outcomes of adaptive co-management is developed and tested. Based on the outcomes from these four components of the study, this thesis explores the ways in which transitions toward adaptive co-management might be initiated under the resource poor conditions that characterise South Africa's communal areas. The four case studies explored in the study are described as 'resource poor' in terms of institutional capacity, ecosystem productivity and social vulnerability. From a resilience perspective these case studies can be described as being in the re-organisation phase of the adaptive cycle following multiple disturbances over time, largely due to South Africa's historical 'separate development' policies. Scholars have suggested that it is in this re-organisation phase that innovation and novelty might occur. The lens of social learning is applied to analyse collaborative processes within these contexts. Results indicate that the institutional innovation necessary for transitions toward adaptive co-management relies on careful facilitation by an 'honest broker'. Equally important is finding a balance between maintaining key individuals and knowledge holders within decision making networks, and preventing rigidity and vulnerability within communities of practice. The results point to an over simplification in the rhetoric that currently surrounds the learning outcomes of multi level networks. The governance outcomes of the initiatives are explored through the lenses of adaptive governance, social capital, adaptive capacity and self-organisation. Results indicate that under resource poor conditions creating the conditions that facilitate self-organisation is the major challenge facing transformations toward adaptive governance. Long term access to reliable information and capacity and financial support for adaptive management are key constraining variables. The livelihood outcomes of the initiatives are analysed through the lens of resilience and diversification. Results suggest that flexibility, rather than livelihood diversity, is the key livelihood strategy employed by households in situations were options are limited. Interventions that enhance opportunities for households to specialise in situ by actively dealing with structural constraints, such as access to markets and credit, is vital to encouraging innovation during transitions toward adaptive co-management. Based on the results from monitoring, this study identifies key focus areas that require a great deal more attention if transitions toward adaptive co-management are to be initiated under resource poor conditions.

Based on newfound family letters, factory archives, oral history, and offiicial publications in Shanghai and other Chinese cities, this dissertation examines how urban Chinese families weathered the economic aftermath of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution by negotiating with the austerity measures, official ideology, and street-level bureaucracy. Such multivalent negotiations gave rise to "xiaokang", a “Confucianized” doctrine of depoliticized economic development, providing a durable basis for socialist China’s integration with the capitalist world order. A Shanghai-focused history of urban household economy and grassroots ideology in socialist China, this dissertation explains how urban families shaped modern China’s state-society dynamics and charted China’s unique transition away from Communism. Urban families’ experiences in late Maoist China were profoundly shaped by “revolutionary austerity”, characterized by ideological mobilization of urban families to bear the costs of Mao’s continuous revolution. By separating millions of teenagers from their families, the send-down youths movement (1968-1980) marked the austerity's apex. Instead of continuing the revolution, the send-down youths movement and other revolutionary austerity measures transformed urban families into smaller, more efficient, and depoliticized economic units. Once the ideologically disillusioned and economically strained sent-down youths negotiated the difficult bureaucratic terrain to achieve family reunion, they reinvested the virtue of sacrifice to the “possessive vision” of family life and the cultivation of their single child. By examining eight collections of Mao-era family letters in the context of larger historical processes, this dissertation demonstrates a significant shift in the late Maoist household economy and grassroots sentiments undergirding China’s "xiaokang" ideology.

This dissertation studies topics in international macroeconomics. In the first chapter, I develop a heterogeneous agent model of a small open economy and studies how households differ in their responses to aggregate productivity and interest rate shocks. Poor households display stronger consumption responses to an aggregate productivity shock because they are more likely to be constrained in liquid assets. In contrast, rich households display stronger consumption responses to an interest rate shock because they are more likely to be unconstrained in liquid assets. When the economy experiences a sudden stop, defined as transitory contractionary shocks to productivity and the interest rate, the interest rate effect neutralizes the productivity effect. As a consequence, the sudden stop generates consumption-income elasticities that display little variation along the income distribution, similar to a permanent shock. My finding captures the observed behavior of households in the Mexican Peso Crisis of 1994. In the second chapter, I study a small open economy subject to a borrowing constraint which experiences stochastic volatility in its output endowment. I find that volatility shocks induce substantial changes in borrowing by households, in excess of the precautionary savings response. Household responses to volatility shocks increases the standard deviation of borrowing, but not the standard deviation of consumption, suggesting small welfare costs. Stochastic volatility increases the frequency of financial crises in a decentralized economy that overborrowsdue to a pecuniary externality, but not a socially optimal economy. In the third chapter, I introduce income heterogeneity into a small open economy model with an occasionally binding collateral constraint. Income heterogeneity generates poor households that borrow up to the constraint to smooth over their income shock. This differs from representative agent models that require a depressed aggregate state for the representative household to interact with the constraint. As a consequence, the model displays a higher average marginal propensity to consume which generates a higher volatility of aggregate consumption. The model with income heterogeneity fails to generate sudden stops. This occurs as the income shock generates rich households that are able to consumption smooth throughout contractions. In the fourth chapter, I trace the path between a benchmark representative agent model and a benchmark heterogeneous agent model. Heterogeneous agent models typically introduce idiosyncratic income risk, a financial friction in the form of a borrowing or non-negativity constraint, and recalibrate the impatience of households. This paper studies the effect of each term. With the minimal financial friction that households cannot starve, complete markets fail, but income risk has no significant effect on the aggregate response of consumption to an endowment or interest rate shock relative to a representative agent benchmark. Heterogeneity and significant financial frictions generate empirically realistic marginal propensities to consume, but fail to alter the aggregate consumption response. Decreasing the impatience of households is necessary to significantly alter aggregate responses to endowment and interest rate shocks.

This dissertation is part of a growing body of research studying the implications of micro heterogeneity - differences between different types of households and workers - for macro economic policy. By incorporating heterogeneity into monetary and fiscal policy frameworks, I am able to study both the distributional consequences of policy and uncover ways in which differences between households change policy transmission mechanisms. In the first chapter, I show that growing differences across the income distribution in workers' substitutability with capital alters the strength of a key monetary policy transmission mechanism. In the second chapter, I highlight and measure a new trade-off between redistribution policies and long-run investment stemming from differences in households' propensity to save out of permanent income. In the third chapter, joint with Jennifer La'O, we show that when the degree of labor income inequality changes over the business cycle, and fiscal policy is unable to respond to these changes, optimal monetary policy should take this inequality into account. Chapter 1 examines how heterogeneity in worker substitutability with capital affects the labor income channel of monetary policy. Empirically, I show that workers performing routine tasks see smaller labor income gains than other workers following a monetary expansion and have higher marginal propensities to consume (MPC). I show that this relationship dampens the role that the labor market plays in monetary policy transmission. I embed capital-task complementarity in a medium-scale HANK model calibrated to match the respective capital-labor elasticities and labor shares of routine and non-routine workers. This worker heterogeneity reduces the size of the labor income channel 25 percent. Chapter 2 studies the trade-offs associated with income redistribution in an overlapping generations model in which savings rates increase with permanent income. By transferring resources from high savers to low savers, redistribution lowers aggregate savings, and depresses investment. I derive sufficient conditions under which this savings behavior generates a welfare trade-off between permanent income redistribution and capital accumulation in the short and long run. I quantify the size of this trade-off in two ways. First, I derive a sufficient statistic formula for the impact of this channel on welfare, and estimate the formula using U.S. household panel data. When redistribution is done with a labor income tax, the welfare costs associated with my channel are around 1/3 the size of those associated with labor supply distortions. Second, I solve a quantitative overlapping generations model with un-insurable idiosyncratic earnings risk in which savings rates increase with permanent income calibrated to the U.S. in 2019. In this setting, I find that around 17 percent of the trade-off between labor income redistribution and average consumption can be attributed to my channel. In Chapter 3, joint with Jennifer La'O, we study optimalmonetary policy in a dynamic, general equilibrium economy with heterogeneous agents. All heterogeneity is ex-ante: workers differ in type-specific, state-contingent labor productivity, yet markets are complete. The fiscal authority has access to a uniform, state-contingent lump-sum tax (or transfer), but linear taxes are restricted to be non-state contingent. We derive sufficient conditions under which implementing flexible-price allocations is optimal. We show that such allocations are not optimal when the relative labor income distribution varies with the business cycle; in such cases, optimal monetary policy implements a state-contingent mark-up that co-moves positively with a sufficient statistic for labor income inequality.

This study investigated rural livelihoods in two contrasting environments in the upper and lower reaches of the Gariep River: Sehlabathebe in the Lesotho highlands, and the Richtersveld in the Northern Cape, and how these have changed over time. Livelihoods were examined using the Sustainable Livelihoods Framework in conjunction with the household development cycle. This study therefore adopted a multi-scale approach, where a micro-level household analysis was framed within the macro level social, political, environmental, economic and institutional context, while taking into account the role of temporal scale of livelihood change. A multi-scale approach facilitated the identification of the major drivers of change, both exogenous and endogenous. The combination of livelihood strategies pursued differed between the two sites. Households in Sehlabathebe are reliant mainly on arable and garden cultivation, livestock in some households, occasional remittances, use of wild resources, petty trading and reliance on donations. Households in the Richtersveld relied primarily on livestock, wage labour, use of wild resources and State grants or pensions. The livelihood strategies pursued in each site have not changed markedly over time, but rather the relative importance of those strategies was found to have changed. The assets available to households, the livelihood strategies adopted and the changes in these livelihood strategies are influenced by a households stage in the development cycle and differing macro-level factors. Drivers of change operate at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and are often complex and interrelated. The major drivers of livelihood change were identified as macro-economic, demographic, institutional and social and climatic. This study highlights the importance of using historical analysis in the study of livelihoods, as well as the complexity and diversity of rural livelihoods. Ecosystem goods and services were found to play a fundamental role in rural livelihoods and are influenced by institutional factors. Rural households are heavily reliant on the formal economy, and macro-economic changes have had a significant impact on livelihoods. This is highlighted by how the drastic decline in migrant labour opportunities for households in Sehlabathebe has negatively affected them. Vulnerability was shown to be a result of external shocks and trends, such as institutional transformation, a decline in employment opportunities, theft and climatic variation; and differed between the two sites. The role of institutional breakdown was shown to be a major factor influencing rural livelihoods, and this is related to broader economic and political changes. This study contributes to the growing literature on rural livelihoods by allowing for an appreciation of how differing environments and contextual factors influence livelihood strategies adopted, and which different factors are driving change.

Incorrect Afrikaans summary included in thesis. / Thesis (MPhil--University of Stellenbosch, 2000. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study was aimed at using secondary data to conduct an investigation into the relationship between macro-economic factors on one hand and aspects of household life on the other hand. On the basis of the results thereof, an assessment was to be made of how such a relationship reflected on the living arrangements of households in contemporary South African society. The basis of the analysis was secondary data from the October Household Survey (OHS-96) data set, which is rich in specific information encompassing various aspects of human life, like demographic details and household variables as well as health, education and employment variables. As expected, the results showed that the current state of living arrangements of households is characterised by positive relationships between income levels on the one hand and households variables like type of dwelling and dwelling ownership on the other hand. However, the same findings further revealed a surprising outcome that unlike expected, there is no clear relationship between income and another significant household variable i.e. household size (members). However, our findings lead us to a conclusion that on the whole, there is a hypothesised relationship between macro-economic conditions of a country on one hand, and patterns in living arrangements of households on the other hand. The results further revealed that as expected, the factors of magisterial district and race/population groups have an effect on this relationship that reflect our legacy of social and economic development policies of the apartheid era which gave rise to urban (metropolitan) and racial bias in the socio-economic development of households. The results thereof are that African households in particular, and urban poor black households in general, have become the least prosperous in terms of material or economic living conditions. The implications of these findings for theory and policy are highlighted. At the level of methodology, the valuable experience of this study served to further highlight the worth of secondary data analysis, not only in general economic terms, but also as invaluable educational or teaching tool for students which recommends its increased use by all practitioners or institutions of social research methods. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die Internet en sy Kuberruimtes is ontwikkel in die 1960s as 'n manier om inligting oor te dra sonder die risiko van intersepsie en vernietiging. Vandag, 40 jaar later het die Internet gegroei in beide grootte en toepassing. Die mees algemene gebruike is nogsteeds kommunikasie en die oordrag van informasie. Hierdie tesis is 'n etnografiese studie van my ervaringe in 'n Kuberruimte van die Internet- 'n virtuele gemeenskap byname Amazon City.com. Virtuele gemeenskappe is areas op die Internet waar mense bymekaar kom om hul daaglikse lewens, kwessies en enige iets toepaslik vir die spesifieke gemeenskap, te bespreek. Die tipe gemeenskap word gesien as 'n reaksie van die verval van "derde plekke" in af-lyn lewe en globalisering Die gemeenskap wat vorm in hierdie areas ontwikkel kulturele veronderstelling. Hierdie veronderstellings word openbaar aan 'n nuwe lid deur tyd en interaksie in die konferensie area. Die veronderstellings wat ek ervaar het strek van kennis benodig om 'n aanvaarde en suksesvolle lid van die gemeenskap te word, tot taal gebruik en identiteit van die lede. Die konklusie is bereik dat lede hul interaksie en lidmaatskap in hierdie gemenskappe as net so bevredigend en "eg" ervaar as hul aktiwiteite in hul af-lyn lewe. Verdere aspekte wat 'n webblad 'n suksesvolle en ekonomiese vatbare besigheids strategie maak vir sy eienaar, was my volgende fokus. Internet besigheid groei teen 'n geweldige spoed, en impliseer nie slegs die verkoop van produkte aanlyn nie. Rekenaar-ondersteunde kommunikasie toestelle is geimplimenteer op kommersiële webbladsye nadat dit gevind is in die vroeë 1990s dat mense soek vir 'n plek wat meer is as net nog 'n winkel. Ander maniere wat hierde dot com webbladsye gebruik om inkomste te genereer en of die lede gesien word as burgers of as verbruikers word ook bestudeer. Daar is gevind dat die lede hulself sien as burgers maar webbladsy lojaliteit sal die lede aanspoor om as verbruikers op te tree indien nodig. Die kommersiële aspekte van die tipe webbladsy is 'n noodsaaklik deel vir die voortbestaan van die dot com webbladsy, en die gemeenskap wat daar ontwikkel.