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

The social and behavioral sciences provide an essential but often unappreciated knowledge base for informed choices affecting environmental quality. These sciences can help decision makers understand environmental processes and policies, as well as to organize decision-making processes to be well-informed and democratic.  Recognizing the need to develop this more fully, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Science Foundation asked the National Academies to identify a number of science priorities for federal scientific and environmental agencies based on the following three criteria: (1) the likelihood of achieving significant scientific advances, (2) the potential value of the expected knowledge for improving decisions that have important environmental implications, and (3) the likelihood that the research would be used to improve those decisions. This report recommends that federal scientific and environmental agencies should:    support a program of research in the decision sciences addressed to improving the analytical tools and deliberative processes necessary for good environmental decision-making; support a concerted effort to build scientific understanding needed for designing and evaluating institutions for governing human activities that affect environmental resources; substantially expand support for research to understand the influence of environmental considerations in business decisions; support a concerted research effort to better understand and inform environmentally significant decisions by individuals; and pursue a research strategy that emphasizes decision relevance and that these processes should be participatory.
		Garry D. Brewer and Paul C. Stern, Editors, Panel on Social and Behavioral Science Research Priorities for Environmental Decision Making, Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change, National Research Council (2005) Read the report free in its entirety Executive Summary Purchase Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change Center on Economic, Governance, and International Studies Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education Other reports of interest: Ensuring Environmental Health in Postindustrial Cities (2003) The Drama of the Commons (2002) New Tools for Environmental Protection: Education, Information, and Voluntary Measures (2002) Human Dimensions of Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade (1999) Global Environmental Change: Research Pathways for the Next Decade (1999) Linking Science and Technology to Society's Environmental Goals (1996)