Decision Making for the Environment: Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities

Decision Making for the Environment recommends new research efforts involving the non-economic social and behavioural sciences that could contribute to improved decisions affecting environmental quality. It also offers a strategy for making environmental research more decision relevant. It recommends decision science research to improve analytical tools and deliberative processes necessary for good environmental decision making, research to understand and evaluate the social institutions that shape human use of environmental resources, research to understand the influence of environmental considerations on business decisions, and research to understand and inform individuals’ environmentally significant decisions. To increase decision relevance, governments need to employ a participatory approach that involves both the producers and users in guiding research. This approach should be used to develop environmental indicators that include pressures on the environment, environmental states, and human responses and consequences; to evaluate environmental policies; to develop better ways to anticipate environmental futures; and to better assess the impacts of environmental policies and programmes on different segments of society. The book includes several papers that expand on the state of knowledge in the recommended areas.