Environmental Decision-Making

Over the past 30 years, there has been a growing recognition amongst environmental advocates, resource managers, policymakers and researchers that the underlying cause of most environmental, conservation and sustainability issues is human behavior. As NRC and ENVIRSCI majors, you have received extensive technical training in how natural systems operate yet relatively little training when it comes to influencing or understanding how people make environmental decisions that affect those natural systems. Recognizing the fundamental role that human decision-making plays in shaping the environment reveals a new set of tools and approaches for both understanding the challenges we face and confronting those challenges effectively. We will spend the semester exploring the underlying factors that drive environmental decisions, the key challenges that environmental issues pose for decision makers, and insights from the behavioral, social and communications sciences into designing effective environmental behavior change campaigns and strategies. In doing so, we will gain a greater appreciation for the importance of focusing on people when our aim, ultimately, is to protect the natural world

Environmental Decision-Making (NRC 494 EI)

Over the past 30 years, there has been a growing recognition amongst environmental advocates, resource managers, policymakers and researchers that the underlying cause of most environmental, conservation and sustainability issues is human behavior. As NRC and ENVIRSCI majors, you have received extensive technical training in how natural systems operate yet relatively little training when it comes to influencing or understanding how people make environmental decisions that affect those natural systems. Recognizing the fundamental role that human decision-making plays in shaping the environment reveals a new set of tools and approaches for both understanding the challenges we face and confronting those challenges effectively. We will spend the semester exploring the underlying factors that drive environmental decisions, the key challenges that environmental issues pose for decision makers, and insights from the behavioral, social and communications sciences into designing effective environmental behavior change campaigns and strategies. In doing so, we will gain a greater appreciation for the importance of focusing on people when our aim, ultimately, is to protect the natural world

Taking responsibility for future generations promotes personal action on climate change

Climate change is already here, but we know that its worst impacts are waiting in the wings for future generations. Unless we step up to the challenge, as individuals and as a species. Stylianos Syropoulos and Ezra Markowitz discuss how emphasising personal and collective responsibility towards future generations can not only promote climate change concern, but also potentially increase support for the hard work ahead

Understanding Public Opinion in Debates over Biomedical Research: Looking beyond Political Partisanship to Focus on Beliefs about Science and Society

As social scientists have investigated the political and social factors influencing public opinion in science-related policy debates, there has been growing interest in the implications of this research for public communication and outreach. Given the level of political polarization in the United States, much of the focus has been on partisan differences in public opinion, the strategies employed by political leaders and advocates that promote those differences, and the counter-strategies for overcoming them. Yet this focus on partisan differences tends to overlook the processes by which core beliefs about science and society impact public opinion and how these schema are often activated by specific frames of reference embedded in media coverage and popular discourse. In this study, analyzing cross-sectional, nationally representative survey data collected between 2002 and 2010, we investigate the relative influence of political partisanship and science-related schema on Americans' support for embryonic stem cell research. In comparison to the influence of partisan identity, our findings suggest that generalized beliefs about science and society were more chronically accessible, less volatile in relation to media attention and focusing events, and an overall stronger influence on public opinion. Classifying respondents into four unique audience groups based on their beliefs about science and society, we additionally find that individuals within each of these groups split relatively evenly by partisanship but differ on other important dimensions. The implications for public engagement and future research on controversies related to biomedical science are discussed

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Behavioral Change : An Assessment of Past Research On Energy Use, Transportation and Water Consumption

17 p.Behavioral changes are certain to be an important component in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and combating climate change. However, relatively little research has been done to clarify what is known about the ability to motivate people to change their behavior in a way that reduces GHGs. This report provides a preliminary overview of the existing research on this critical question. It then provides a framework for thinking about how to plan and execute GHG reducing behavioral change interventions. This is not a comprehensive assessment. Instead, it highlights some of the most readily available relevant research on behavioral change and GHG reductions in three domains: energy use, transportation, and water consumption. Our intent is to offer a clear, simple, basic guide that can serve as a starting point for implementation of behavioral change programs and for further research into the topic

Climate Decision-Making

Climate change decision-making has emerged in recent decades as an area of research and practice, expanding on an earlier focus on climate policy. Defined as the study of decisions relevant for climate change, it draws on developments in decision science, particularly advances in the study of cognitive and deliberative processes in individuals and organizations. The effects of climate, economic, social, and other framings on decision-making have been studied, often showing that nonclimate frames can be as effective as, or more effective than, climate frames in promoting decision-making and action. The concept of urgency, linked to the ideas of climate crisis and climate emergency, has taken on importance in recent years. Research on climate decision-making has influenced numerous areas of climate action, including nudges and other behavioral interventions, corporate social responsibility, and Indigenous decision-making. Areas of transformational change, such as strategic retreat in the face of sea-level rise, are emerging

Public engagement with climate change: the role of human values

A long history of interdisciplinary research highlights the powerful role that human values play in shaping individuals' engagement with environmental issues. That certain values are supportive of proenvironmental orientation and behavior is now well established. But as the challenge of communicating the risks of climate change has grown increasingly urgent, there has been a rise in interest around how values shape public engagement with this issue. In the current paper, we review the growing body of work that explores the role of human values (and the closely related concept of cultural worldviews) in public engagement with climate change. Following a brief conceptual overview of values and their relationship to environmental engagement in general, we then provide a review of the literature linking value-orientations and engagement with climate change. We also review both academic and ‘gray’ literature from civil society organizations that has focused on how public messages about climate change should be framed, and discuss the significance of research on human values for climate change communication strategies

Compassion fade and the challenge of environmental conservation

Compassion shown towards victims often decreases as the number of individuals in need of aid increases, identifiability of the victims decreases, and the proportion of victims helped shrinks. Such “compassion fade” may hamper individual-level and collective responses to pressing large-scale crises. To date, research on compassion fade has focused on humanitarian challenges; thus, it remains unknown whether and to what extent compassion fade emerges when victims are non-human others. Here we show that compassion fade occurs in the environmental domain, but only among non-environmentalists. These findings suggest that compassion fade may challenge our collective ability and willingness to confront the major environmental problems we face, including climate change. The observed moderation effect of environmental identity further indicates that compassion fade may present a significant psychological barrier to building broad public support for addressing these problems. Our results highlight the importance of bringing findings from the field of judgment and decision making to bear on pressing societal issues

The etiology of mathematical and reading (dis)ability covariation in a sample of Dutch twins

The genetic etiology of mathematical and reading (dis)ability has been studied in a number of distinct samples, but the true nature of the relationship between the two remains unclear. Data from the Netherlands Twin Register was used to determine the etiology of the relationship between mathematical and reading (dis)ability in adolescent twins. Ratings of mathematical and reading problems were obtained from parents of over 1500 twin pairs. Results of bivariate structural equation modeling showed a genetic correlation around .60, which explained over 90% of the phenotypic correlation between mathematical and reading ability. The genetic model was the same for males and females