Handbook on the State of the Art in Applied Psychology

CHAPTER 4 Key Challenges to Understanding Environmental Decision‐Making

Thomas Dietz

Department of Sociology and Environmental Science and Policy, Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA

Abstract

Environmental psychology and in particular the study of environmentally consequential decisions has made immense progress over the last 40 years. What does the future hold? As a means of assessing current knowledge, I offer nine challenges for future work: (a) assessing the strength of evidence in our studies; (b) focusing on what matters; (c) expanding our theories of altruism; (d) unifying the grand traditions in the study of decision‐making; (e) understanding contexts; (f) considering social influences and network effects; (g) examining emerging technologies; (h) engaging normative theories; (i) incorporating sustainability. The list is certainly not exhaustive but it may be helpful in thinking about new directions our work should take.

Keywords

environmental psychology, biophysical environment, technical potential, behavioral plasticity, initiative feasibility, altruism, emerging technologies, sustainability

Background in the Environmental Movement

The modern environmental movement emerged in the 1960s. In the US it was marked by Rachel Carson's courageous Silent Spring (Carson, 1962), the resistance of the Sierra Club and other environmental organizations to dams on the Colorado River (Wyss, 2016) and of course ...