SRA-E Lisbon 2017

Small communities in a rural area deal with the effect of the political system in a specific way. The financial support that the municipality should offer to them depends on the internal organization of the community to pressure and to demand what should be a right. The focus of this study is a Brazilian rural community that produces the cashew nut. The procedure used to make a tasteful cashew nut causes pollution and consequently can cause damage to community’s health and environment. Therefore, this economic activity offers socioeconomic risks because makes the community dependent on individuals who buy the cashew nut to sell in the cities. It was developed a questionnaire to inquire what kind of choices the participants would do to investigating if it could be possible to identify cognitive bias related to community issues. It was interviewed 69 (6,9% of the population) inhabitants, a slight majority of women (57%) with the mean age of 36,10 (SD=16,76) years-old. The results showed that for collective choices the issue should be related to leisure/art, infrastructure, education, and health. But when the issue deals with politics, economic affairs, children, drugs, house, and security the decision is based on the individual impact even it is a community problem and what is more valued is related to health and infrastructure. The results indicate that collective and individual choices play an important role in the way to address the community problems can be biased. It is discussed how the data can help to understand the risk situation of the community and which strategies should be used to increase their quality of life.