Environmental behaviour and collective decision making

Abstract

Decision-making is considered from different disciplinary perspectives (psychology, economics and game theory, political sciences) and in different contexts. The course is structured by focusing decision making on ascending levels of human regulatory systems (individuals, groups, institutions, community level) in contexts of forest & landscape management and other environmentally relevant areas.

Objective

Environmental decision-making can be analyzed from different disciplinary perspectives, and the level at which scientists analyze decision-making depends on the context and research goals. In the course students get acquainted with theoretical approaches from psychology, economics and political sciences. Theories are explained through examples of their application in different contexts ranging from urban and rural landscape management to other domains of environmental behaviour, management and planning, both in developed and developing countries. The course is structured by focusing decision-making on ascending levels of human regulatory systems: 1) Individual behaviour and decision-making 2) Decision-making in small groups and household level models 3) Institutions, organizations and community/village-level models This structure is helpful for identifying theoretical models that are useful for answering specific research questions: Psychological theories are frequently applied to individual behaviour and decision making and various social psychological theories focus on small group decision making. Economic theories can, for example, help explain household-level, community/village-level and the decision-making of institutions. Structuring the course by regulatory levels shall thus provide a framework for the students, which enables them to identify and apply theories that are helpful for answering certain research questions. Exercises and examples of application shall enable the students to get in depth knowledge of certain theories, which shall enable them to apply the models and theories themselves.

Content

Decision-making is considered from different disciplinary perspectives (psychology, economics and game theory, political sciences) and in different contexts. The course is structured by focusing decision making on ascending levels of human regulatory systems in contexts of focusing forest & landscape management and other environmentally relevant areas: 1. Individual-level models (psychological theories and modeling, communication and public campaigns, leisure activities, waste disposal and recycling behavior, developed countries, rural/urban) 2. Group level models (psychological theories and modeling, group techniques, rural/urban, developed countries) 3. Household-level models (rural, productive-consumption, developing countries, development economic theories) 4. Community/village-level models (rural, collective action, institutions, developing countries, political science/economics) - Psychological theory shall be taught in connection with economic/political approaches and with an orientation towards modeling of individual behavior and group decision-making. (Approaches covered include e.g. Theory of planned behavior, Norm activation Theory, Neutralization Theory, Rational Choice and Expected Utility models, Social Decision Schemes, DISCUSS model, Probabilistic model of Opinion Change including Distance). - Solution oriented approaches towards influencing environmental behavior (environmental education, communication, campaigns) and improving group processes (Groupthink phenomena, Group Techniques) shall be covered by the course. - Certain household models of behavior (e.g. consumption-production models) and theories of community (group)-level decision-making through collective action are frequently suitable for attempting to explain natural resource management in developing countries. The latter includes facets of game theory such as in trying to solve the ‘commons problem’ in NRM. Furthermore, collective action theory is strongly linked to the role of local-level institutions in NRM.

Resources