CONTENTS

PREFACE   xiii

PART I
INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1
THE EARTH'S ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AND THE ROLE OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR  1

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
- Box l-1: Human Activities and the Global Nitrogen Cycle
- Focus of This Book: The Behavioral Dimensions
- Format and Organization of This Book
- More on the Role of Individual Behavior
More on Global Environmental Problems
- Global Warming
- Ozone Layer Depletion
- Rapid Loss of Tropical Forests and Loss of Genetic Diversity
- Destruction of Ecological Capital
- Driving Forces That Underlie Environmental Problems
- Box 1-2: More on Momentum in Growth Processes
Reasons for Guarded Optimism

PART II
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AS "TRAGEDIES OF THE COMMONS" -
BEHAVIORAL. SOLUTION STRATEGIES

CHAPTER 2
ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AS TRAGEDIES OF THE COMMONS  21

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
Intellectual Roots of the Tragedy-of-the-Commons Concept and Different Solutions to Tragedy-of-the-Commons Situations
- Four Solution Approaches
- Government Laws, Regulations, ad Incentives
- Education
- Small-Croup/Community Management
- Moral, Religious, and/or Ethical Appeals
- Which of the Four Solution Approaches to Use? Champions of the Different Approaches
- Box 2-1: How Tragedy Was Averted on the English Agricultural Commons
- The Four Solution Approaches: Strategy for the Next Five Chapters
Chapter Epilogue

CHAPTER 3
RELIGIOUS AND MORAL APPROACHES: CHANGING VALUES, BELIEFS, AND WORLDVIEWS  33

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
Do Values, Morals, Beliefs, and Religious Teachings and Practices Affect How Individuals and Cultures Treat Their Environment?
- Survey-Research in a Single Country (the United States)
- Historical and Intercultural Evidence
Proenvironmental Religious/Moral Movements-Current Developments and Possible Future Trends
- Ecotheology
- Thomas Berry's Work
- The Deep Ecology Movement
- Ecofeminism
Common Threads in Religious/Morally Based Environmental Movements
- Shared Ecological Worldview
- Shared Ecocentric Values
- Plan for the Rest of the Chapter
Issue One: Are Environmental Values and Beliefs Changing?
- Strong Public Support for Environmental Protection
- Emerging Support, for the Ecological Worldview
- A Direct Search for Ecocentric Public Values
- The Emergence of "Post-Materialist" Values
Issue Two: Will Changes in Values and Beliefs Persist?
Issue Three: How Do Values and Beliefs Influence People's Actions?
- A Closer Look at How Values (and Beliefs about the Consequences of Environmental Problems) Influence Actions
- Factors That Can Limit the Effect of Value and Belief Changes
Conclusion

CHAPTER 4
EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTIONS: CHANCING ATTITUDES AND PROVIDING INFORMATION  71

Chapter Prologue
Introduction Education to Change Environmental Attitudes and Beliefs
- Box 4-1: Attitudes versus Barriers to Action: Energy Conservation in Massachusetts, 1980
Efforts to Change Behavior with Information
- Information, Plain and Simple
- Better Ways to Provide Information
Tightening the Links from Attitudes to Behavior
When Does Information Work?
Summary and Conclusion: What Can Education Accomplish?

CHAPTER 5
CHANGING THE INCENTIVES   95

Chapter Prologue
The Theory of Incentives for Environmental Protection
- Box 5-I: The Theory of Externalities
Incentives for Ride Sharing and Mass Transit Use
Incentives for Recycling and Waste Reduction
Reducing Energy Use in Homes
- Energy Price Changes
- Financial Rewards
- Making Conservation Convenient
Principles for Designing Effective Incentives
Conclusion: What Can Incentives Accomplish?
Epilogue: How People Changed the Incentives Facing a Corporation

CHAPTER 6
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT OF THE COMMONS  125

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
How Does Resource Management Work in Small Communities?
- Characteristics of the Resource
- Characteristics of the Group
- Characteristics of Effective Rules
- The Role of Central Government in Community Management
- The Psychology of Community Management
- Community Management and Hardin's Model
- Other Benefits of Community Management
Applying Community Management Principles Beyond Small Groups
- Local Resource Dependence in Modern Societies
- Community Management without Resource Dependence
Community Management as a Way of Life
- Community Management versus Development Policy
- Making Resources More Manageable
When Is Community Management Likely to Work?
Conclusion: What Can Community Management Accomplish?
- Advantages of Community: Management
- Limitations of Community Management
- Promising Applications of Community Management

CHAPTER 7
COMBINING THE SOLUTION STRATEGIES  153

Chapter Prologue
- A Model Energy Conservation Program
- A Success Story on Recycling
Lessons of Successful Environmental Programs
- A. Use Multiple Intervention Types to Address the Factors Limiting Behavior Change
- B. Understand the Situation from the Actor's Perspective
- C. When Limiting Factors Are Psychological, Apply Understanding of Human Choice Processes
- D. Address Conditions Beyond the Individual that Constrain Proenvironmental Choice
- E. Set Realistic Expectations about Outcomes
- F. Continually Monitor Responses and Adjust Programs Accordingly
- G. Stay within the Bounds of the Actors' Tolerance for Intervention
- H. Use Participatory Methods of Decision Making
An Additional Value of Participatory Methods
Conclusion

PART III
HUMAN BEHAVIORAL PREDISPOSITIONS AS AIDS OR BARRIERS TO SOLUTIONS

CHAPTER 8
STONE AGE GENETIC BEHAVIORAL PREDISPOSITIONS IN THE SPACE AGE  175

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
- Human Genetic Predispositions and Environmental Problems
- A Primer on Anthropology: Biological Evolution and Cultural Evolution
- Box 8-1: Darwinian Natural Selection
Natural Stimuli and Human Well-Being: The Biophilia Hypothesis
- Informal and Indirect Evidence for the Biophilia Hypothesis
- Limited Grounds and Criteria for Inferring the Existence of Genetic Behavioral Predispositions
- Box 8-2: Genotypes versus Phenotypes
- Direct und Formal Evidence for Biophilia as a Human Genetic Predispositions
- Brief Overview of the Biophilia Research
Genetically Based Sex and Reproductive Urges
- Implications of Ehrlich's Argument
- Global Population Growth - Other Causes and Solutions
Are Human Beings Short-Term Egoists by Nature?
- The Argument That Natural Selection Favors Egoism
- Arguments That Natural Selection Favors Altruism
- Explaining Altruism as Egoism: Sociobiology and Reciprocity
- A Cultural Evolutionary Account of Altruism
Stone Age Genetic Perceptual and Cognitive Predispositions
- Hardin's Hypothesis: Genetically Based Denial
- Ornstein and Ehrlich's Theory: The "Old" Human Mind in the New World

CHAPTER 9
HUMAN REACTIONS TO ENVIRONMENTAI HAZARDS: PERCEPTUAL AND COGNITIVE PROCESSES  205

Chapter Prologue
- Example A: Underreaction to a Natural Hazard: UCLA Students and Earthquakes
- Example B. Overreaction to a Natural Hazard: Lightning versus Tornadoes
- Example C: Overreaction to the Risks of Nuclear Power and Other Technologies
Introduction - More on People's Reactions to Hazards and Risks
- Underreactions to Natural, Technological, and Personal Health Hazards: A Closer Look
- Overreactions to Natural, Technological, and Personal Health Hazards: A Closer Look
- An Important Side Trip: A Major Problem When Judging Whether People Over- or Underreact to Risks of a Technology - The Moral, Ethical, and Political Issues that Underlie Societal Debates about Technological Risks
- An Overview of Psychological Causes of Risk Misestimation and Failure to Take Appropriate Actions - Four Theories
Perceptual/Cognitive/Emotional/Evolutionary Causes of Risk Underreaction -Three Theories
- Slovic, Fischhoff, and Lichtertstein's (1978) Concept of Risk
- Underestimation/Inaction as Necessary for "Getting on with One's Life"
- Taylor and Brown's (1988) Theory about "Illusions," Perceived Control, and Mental Health
- Psychological Stress Theory: Denial as a Response to Environmental Threats Perceived as Uncontrollable
Cognitive/Perceptual Biases, Errors, and Shortcuts as Causes of Both Hazard Overreaction and Underreaction - 0ne Psychological Theory
- Bounded Rationality
- The Availability Heuristic
- Availability and Risk Underreaction
- Availability and Risk Overreaction
- Other Heuristics, Cognitive Errors, and Biases
- More on Availability: People's Insensitivity to Missing Items in Fault-Tree Analyses and Diagrams
- Yet More on Availability: Some Speculation
- Using Vivid and Concrete Images to Heighten People's Estimates of Risk and to Spur Protective Actions
- Negative Research Evidence on the Use of Vivid, Concrete Images
- Box 9-1: The Scared Straight Program: Could Whoopi Goldberg and Peter Falk Be Wrong?
- Conveying Both the Probability and the Severity of the Hazard
Chapter Summary: Putting the Different Elements Together: Psychological Causes and Possible Solutions
- Overview of Modified Protection Motivation Theory
- Values, Perceived Severity of Hazard, and Perceived Vulnerability (Probability) of Hazard
- Perceived Response-Efficacy, Self-Efficacy, and Perceived Costs and Barriers
- Beyond the Protection-Motivation Framework
Conclusion

PART IV
BEHAVIORAL SOLUTIONS IN CONTEXT: ECOLOGICAL AND SOCIETAL SYSTEMS

CHAPTER 10
CHOOSING THE BEHAVIORS TO CHANGE AND THE POINTS OF INTERVENTION  235

Chapter Prologue
Introduction
- A Behaviorally Oriented Analysis of the U.S. Energy System
- Major Energy Users
- Major Uses of Energy by Individuals and Households
- The Conservation Potential of Thirty Different Energy-Conserving Actions
- More on "Curtailment" Conservation Actions versus "lncreased Efficiency" Conservation Actions
- Box 10-1: Public Conceptions of Household Energy Conservation: An Emphasis on Curtailments and a Neglect of Efficiency Increases
A Behaviorally Oriented Analysis of U.S. Litter and Solid Waste Problems
The General Superiority of "Upstream" Rather than "Downstream" Solutions (or of Prevention Rather than Cure)
Behaviorally Oriented Analyses of Global Environmental Problems: The Greenhouse Effect aud Global Climate Change as an Example
- The Analysis
- Box 10-2: More On "Upstream" versus "Downstream" Solutions, and Prevention versus Cure
- More on Fossil Fuel Consumption
- The Energy Crisis Revisited
Choosing Target Behaviors: Earth Day 1990, and the as-many-as 750 Everyday Things You Can Do to Help Save the Earth.

CHAPTER 11
HUMAN INTERACTIONS WITH COMPLEX SYSTEMS: "NORMAL" ACCIDENTS AND COUNTERINTUITIVE SYSTEM BEHAVIOR   277

Chapter Prologue
- Nuclear Accident at Three Mile Island
Introduction
Complex Technological Systems and "Normal" Accidents
- Characteristics of Normal Accidents
- Box 11-1: Marine Accidents and the Environment: The Grounding of the Oil Tanker Transhuron
- Summary; OtherConsiderations
- Does the Chernobyl Accident Fit the Normal Accident Framework?
Complex Social, Economic, Political, and Environmental Systems
- Urban Systems and Global Environmental Systems
- What Makes Complex Systems Difficult to Comprehend?: High-Order, Multiple Feedback Loops, and Nonlinearities
- Box 11-2: Feedback Loops
- Augmenting the Human Mind: Computer Modeling of Complex Systems
- Counterintuitive Properties of Complex Systems
- Box 11-3: Can "Conservation" Ever Be Bad? The Tucson (Arizona) Paradox
- A Caution Before Drawing Conclusions
Conclusion

CHAPTER 12
HUMAN INTERACTIONS WITH COMPLEX SYSTEMS: CHAOS, SELF-ORGANIZATION, AND THE GLOBAL ENYIRONMENTAI FUTURE  317

Chapter Prologue
Beyond "Control": Deterministic Chaos, Antichaos, and Self-Organization in Complex Systems
- Introduction; Deterministic Chaos and Noncontrol
- Box 12-1: Chaotic Behavior: The Beer Game
- Processes That Counter Chaos
A Broad Look at the Global Environmental Future
- Three Key Characteristics of the Global Environmental System That Increase the Probability of Environmental Disasters
- The Potential of the Global System for Overshoot and Collapse; the Meadows et al. Computer Model
- Criticisms of Meadows et al.' s Global Modeling Work; General Conclusions That Appear to Be Sustained by This Work
- Solutions to Global Environmental Problems'
- Box 12-2: The Julian Simon versus Paul Ehrlich Debate

REFERENCES  345

INDEX  361