This thesis presents an evaluation of the effectiveness of an agroforestry extension program to smallholder farmers on Leyte Island, the Philippines. The imperative for reforestation is well recognised in the Philippines and was the impetus for this program which provided farmers with assistance to establish and silviculturally manage timber trees on their land. Because the cost-effectiveness of agroforestry extension is increased if farmers develop self-efficacy without extensive training, the extension program was offered in two regimes to test the necessity for extended assistance. In the extended assistance regime, farmers were offered on-site assistance to collect seed, grow seedlings, prepare sites and establish trees, whereas in the limited assistance regime, farmers were only offered assistance to collect seed and grow seedlings. Descriptive statistics were collected of farmers’ acceptance of technology and the manner in which technology was adapted to suit their personal circumstances. Translated conversations between farmers and extension staff also provided a rich source of data which provided insights into farmers’ motivation. Extension activities were reviewed at a mid-program workshop, a final on-site inspection and an end-of-program workshop. Farmers responded positively to the extended assistance program which helped them to grow and out-plant seedlings. The limited assistance program was relatively unsuccessful. Overall, the extension program was successful in shifting the initiative for further planting from extension staff to participating farmers. However, farmers showed little interest in applying silvicultural thinning or pruning to existing plantations of trees because extension advice was not congruent with their existing mental models of these procedures. Systems modelling of socio-economic variables which had been found to affect program outcomes was used to predict critical success factors. A key constraint to program recruitment was found to be farmers’ perception of harvest security, even when their needs for technology and planting materials are met. Modelling also cast doubt on the usefulness of written extension materials and emphasised the necessity for extended face-to-face technical assistance. Although conducted in Leyte, the findings of this research provide guidance for issues which affect the adoption of agroforestry both in the Philippines and in other countries. The research found that it was possible to recruit and motivate farmers without providing material incentives. If farmers experienced unexpected problems, providing extended face-to-face contact and assistance was critical if catastrophic losses of participating farmers were to be avoided. The failure of attempts to introduce advanced-age silviculture also indicated a need to elicit farmers’ mental models as a precursor or parallel enquiry to extension activities. In a situation where little was initially known about farmers’ understanding of agroforestry technology or the variables which affect their acceptance or rejection of extension assistance, the results of this research have shown that it is possible to build the capacity of farmers to establish timber trees. This result is in contrast to the acknowledged failure of the logging concession system in the Philippines and the difficulties faced by some industrial plantations and community-based programs. This investigation has shown that an opportunity exists to lift the level of tree planting in Leyte, provided that system variables which are either critical success factors or impediments are addressed.

This thesis presents an evaluation of the effectiveness of an agroforestry extension program to smallholder farmers on Leyte Island, the Philippines. The imperative for reforestation is well recognised in the Philippines and was the impetus for this program which provided farmers with assistance to establish and silviculturally manage timber trees on their land. Because the cost-effectiveness of agroforestry extension is increased if farmers develop self-efficacy without extensive training, the extension program was offered in two regimes to test the necessity for extended assistance. In the extended assistance regime, farmers were offered on-site assistance to collect seed, grow seedlings, prepare sites and establish trees, whereas in the limited assistance regime, farmers were only offered assistance to collect seed and grow seedlings. Descriptive statistics were collected of farmers’ acceptance of technology and the manner in which technology was adapted to suit their personal circumstances. Translated conversations between farmers and extension staff also provided a rich source of data which provided insights into farmers’ motivation. Extension activities were reviewed at a mid-program workshop, a final on-site inspection and an end-of-program workshop. Farmers responded positively to the extended assistance program which helped them to grow and out-plant seedlings. The limited assistance program was relatively unsuccessful. Overall, the extension program was successful in shifting the initiative for further planting from extension staff to participating farmers. However, farmers showed little interest in applying silvicultural thinning or pruning to existing plantations of trees because extension advice was not congruent with their existing mental models of these procedures. Systems modelling of socio-economic variables which had been found to affect program outcomes was used to predict critical success factors. A key constraint to program recruitment was found to be farmers’ perception of harvest security, even when their needs for technology and planting materials are met. Modelling also cast doubt on the usefulness of written extension materials and emphasised the necessity for extended face-to-face technical assistance. Although conducted in Leyte, the findings of this research provide guidance for issues which affect the adoption of agroforestry both in the Philippines and in other countries. The research found that it was possible to recruit and motivate farmers without providing material incentives. If farmers experienced unexpected problems, providing extended face-to-face contact and assistance was critical if catastrophic losses of participating farmers were to be avoided. The failure of attempts to introduce advanced-age silviculture also indicated a need to elicit farmers’ mental models as a precursor or parallel enquiry to extension activities. In a situation where little was initially known about farmers’ understanding of agroforestry technology or the variables which affect their acceptance or rejection of extension assistance, the results of this research have shown that it is possible to build the capacity of farmers to establish timber trees. This result is in contrast to the acknowledged failure of the logging concession system in the Philippines and the difficulties faced by some industrial plantations and community-based programs. This investigation has shown that an opportunity exists to lift the level of tree planting in Leyte, provided that system variables which are either critical success factors or impediments are addressed.

保戶行動主義，也可以說是保單持有人行動主義，係指為因應保險監理國際化，兩岸監理平台的建立，及長年期保險商品的特殊性，對於積極的保單持有人，經由參與公司治理的方式，保障自身的權利。 保戶行動主義的內涵，為將相互保險公司中，保單持有人參與公司治理的模式引導至股份保險公司之中。其目的為促成保單持有人、監理官及保險公司三贏的局面。對於保單持有人而言，為積極性的權益維護，可分為三個方面：第一，因應投保後所產生的問題；第二，取代現行機制對於保單持有人保障可能的失靈或僅是消極性的事後補救措施；第三，鼓勵保單持有人與公司溝通，符合國際上的治理原則。對於監理官而言，則可降低政府對於保險業的監理成本，也就是，政府為維護保單持有人的權益及維護資金的安全性，對於保險業採用高度監理所衍生的成本。對於保險公司而言，除了經由保戶行動主義，得以降低監理強度，而增加公司的市場競爭力之外，也可藉由與保單持有人的溝通而建立正面形象，設計符合客戶需求的商品，進而創造新業績。 本研究將保戶行動主義的制度設計分為規範與架構兩方面，在制度規範形成上，採用寇恩所倡議的反思法法理；在架構設計上，則採用史特姆所建議的制度公民及觸媒組織的架構。公司治理分為內部治理與外部監理，經由反思法的自反性、同源互生性與原則性，將能加強內部治理的自律性，進而降低外部監理的強制性。然而因自發性或反思性形成規範必須經由多數人的討論，為達對話效率，則輔以電子治理網站為對話平台，並在觸媒組織中提出以「核心專家群」為網站的主導者，且為充分對話後的主要決策者，如此將可有效率的形成與廣大保單持有人的對話機制，並尋求多數人的共識，並可增加資訊揭露的透明度。 保戶行動主義中，保戶公民選任保戶董事作為代表，而對話機制則為整體制度成效的關鍵，總共分為四個層面，第一稱為保戶行動主義與法律的對話，論述保戶董事委任關係的法律性質，以及對核心專家群委任的法律性質；第二為保戶公民間的對話，著重對話品質的管理；第三為為保戶行動主義與監理的對話，藉由監理策略形成監理法規的二元規範；最後以保戶董事與股東董事間的對話機制，作為保戶行動主義與股東行動主義對話的代理行為。 為驗證保戶行動主義的有效性，本研究建構其對於治理效率與治理賽局的實證模型以用於未來的實證研究，最後並以兩岸間的弱體保險公司為個案作為說明保戶行動主義應用上的利益實效，為質性上的說明。 / Policyholder activism is to cope with the globalization of insurance supervision, the establishment of the supervision platform between Taiwan and Mainland China, and the special features of the long term insurance, in order for the active policyholders protecting their rights by participating the corporate governance. The connotation of policyholder activism refers to introduce the role of policyholders in mutual life company into the corporate governance for the stock life insurance company. It is of the all-win purpose among the policyholders, the regulator, and the insurance company. For the policyholders, it is to actively safeguard the interests of policyholders, and could be achieved by three aspects, first of all is to avoid the arguments after issuing policy; secondly is to provide an alternative to current mechanisms for the policyholders which might be failure or just a passive response afterwards; the final is to comply the global governance principle by encouraging policyholders to communicate with the corporate. For the regulator, it is to reduce the supervision costs which mainly maintain the rights of policyholders, and the security of the funds. For the insurance company, it is not only by reducing supervision power, in order to increase the market competitiveness, but also by communicating with the policyholders, in order to create the positive image, to know the needs of customers and then to increase the performance. In this study, the structure of policyholder activism is divided into the aspects of norms and framework. This study adopts the reflexive law proposed by Jean Cohen for the norms strategy, and the concepts of institutional citizenship and catalyst group proposed by Susan Sturm for the framework design. Basically, the corporate governance system can be separated into internal governance and external supervision. By three properties of the reflex law, the reflexive, the co-original and the principled, will strengthen the regulated self-regulation of internal governance into norms, thereby reducing the enforcement of external supervision. However, reflex law requires through the democracy process from people discussion to complete the norms, to improve efficacy of discussion, the platform of electronic governance (e-governance) is supposed to be applied. For this purpose, this study introduces “core expert group” in the organizational catalysts as a manager and the decision maker after fully discussion. Then it will become an efficient dialogue mechanism for the consensus with the majority of policyholders, and for the more transparency of the disclosed information. For policyholder activism, the policyholder-director(s), on behalf of the institutional citizenship of policyholders, is(are) elected, therefore the dialogue mechanism is the key of the all, it can be separated into four levels; the first level is called the “dialogue between policyholder activism and the law” which discourses the issues of the legal nature for policyholder-director who appointed by two parties, and the core expert group; the second level is called the “dialogue among policyholders” which focuses on the management of quality; the third level is called the “dialogue between policyholder activism and supervisors” to build the duality of norms by regulation strategy; and the final level is called the “dialogue between policyholder activism and shareholder activism” which represented by the dialogue mechanism between the policyholder-director and the shareholder-director. To validate the effectiveness of policyholder activism, this study constructs the models of performance and game theory for future empirical study. This study finally selects two cases of the impaired insurance companies each in Taiwan and Mainland China, and then discusses the qualitative benefits for the application of policyholder activism.