We have known for some time that complex societies are more likely to have land tenure systems based on private rights and less likely to have communal ownership. Less understood is why. More specifically, what are the mechanisms to explain why complex societies have more private property? What are the adaptive advantages of one system rather than the other? Conceptualizing and coding land tenure systems as a “bundle of rights,” this worldwide cross‐cultural study suggests that Acheson's (2015) economic defendability theory in conjunction with some environmental stressors, such as drought, may help us understand cross‐cultural variation in land tenure systems. Our results have evolutionary implications. They suggest that if property rights were claimed, communal property systems would have been the default system for any society having substantial degrees of hunting, gathering, or herdable animals. Agriculture by itself is not a strong predictor of private land rights, although irrigation agriculture is. [land tenure systems, defendability, resource stress, cross‐cultural]

中文翻译：

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土地私有化的预测因素：防御性和资源压力理论的跨文化检验

我们已经知道一段时间了，复杂的社会更有可能拥有基于私权的土地所有制，而拥有公有制的可能性则较小。很少理解是为什么。更具体地说，有什么机制可以解释为什么复杂社会拥有更多私有财产？一个系统而不是另一个系统的自适应优势是什么？这项全球性跨文化研究将土地保有权制度概念化并编码为“权利捆绑”，这表明Acheson（2015）的经济防御理论与一些环境压力因素（如干旱）一起可能有助于我们理解土地的跨文化差异权属制度。我们的结果具有进化意义。他们建议，如果要求拥有财产权，对于拥有大量狩猎，采集或放牧动物的社会，公共财产制度将是默认系统。尽管灌溉农业是农业，但农业本身并不是私有土地权的有力预测指标。[土地所有权制度，defendability，资源紧张，跨文化]