CRED in the News

Title	Date	Description	Categories:	Note:
10 Things to Do	2014-05-29	Crain's Chicago Business	CRED in the News
10 things you want to know about human nature if you’re fighting climate change	2015-06-10	Lisa Bennett \| Grist	CRED in the News
15 ways to powerfully communicate climate change solutions	2015-05-05	Katherine Purvis \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
4 in 10 adults have never heard of climate change	2015-07-27	Michael Casey \| CBS News	CRED in the News
40 percent of adults on Earth have never heard of climate change	2015-07-27	Chelsea Harvey \| The Washington Post	CRED in the News
5 ways to save water in your house right now	2015-04-16	Deborah Netburn \| LA Times	CRED in the News
A Climate of Collaboration: Environmental scientists urge artists to humanize the stories behind the research	2013-05-01	Chantal Bilodeau, Theatre Communications Group	CRED in the News
A Community Tries to Shrink Its Footprint	2008-01-20	The New York Times	CRED in the News
A Comparative Analysis of Social Participation in Water Management in Burkina Faso and Northeast Brazil: The cases of Upper Comoé and Jaguaribe Basins.	2010	Taddei, R. \| Internal Report	Publications
A Comunicação Social da Informação sobre Tempo e Clima: o Ponto de Vista do Usuário.	2008	Taddei, R. \| Boletim da Sociedade Brasileira de Meteorologia, v. 32, p. 20-39,	Publications
A Dirty Word or a Dirty World? Attribute Framing, Political Affiliation, and Query Theory	2009-04-30	Hardisty, D.J., Johnson, E. J., & Weber, E. U. \| Psychological Science 21(1), 86-92	Publications	Abstract: We explored the effect of attribute framing on choice, labeling charges for environmental costs as either an earmarked tax or an offset. Eight hundred ninety-eight Americans chose between otherwise identical products or services, where one option included a surcharge for emitted carbon dioxide. The cost framing changed preferences for self-identified Republicans and Independents, but did not affect Democrats’ preferences. We explain this interaction by means of query theory and show that attribute framing can change the order in which internal queries supporting one or another option are posed. The effect of attribute labeling on query order is shown to depend on the representations of either taxes or offsets held by people with different political affiliations.10.1177/0956797609355572
A Historic Series Of Interviews At The AGU 2014 Fall Meeting	2014-12-30	Collin Maessen \| Real Sceptic	CRED in the News
A hurricane by any other name: How Sandy changed the way we issue storm warnings	2013-09-13	Earth Magazine	CRED in the News
A January Warm Spell Conjures Mixed Emotions	2013-01-14	The Wall Street Journal	CRED in the News
A Marriage Made in the Lab: The Science Side of Science-Art Collaborations	2014-04-01	Ashley P. Taylor \| SciArt in America	CRED in the News
A Year After Sandy: What Did We Learn?	2013-10-23	Weather Underground, Bryan Norcross	CRED in the News
About time: An integrative approach to effective environmental policy	2012-06-03	Hardisty, D. J., Orlove, B., Krantz, D. H., Small, A., & Milch, K. (2012). \| Global Environmental Change.	Publications	Abstract: Intertemporal trade-offs are inherent in most choices, and are especially salient in environmental decisions. Although psychology, anthropology, and economics each offer unique insights and findings on the mental and social processes underlying the evaluation of future events, each discipline also has its blind spots. Crafting effective policy therefore requires an integration of these three perspectives; this paper offers a concise overview and guide, intended for applied researchers and policy makers. Through three real-world examples, the contributions and integration of the three disciplines are illustrated. Ideally, each perspective feeds into the others in an iterative process, producing an integrative approach that is more than the sum of its parts.10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2012.05.003
Acceptance of global warming rises on warm days	2014-01-14	ars technica	CRED in the News
Achieving Sustainable Development: Behavior Change through Goal Priming and Judicious Decision Mode Selection.		Weber, E.U. \| In Sachs, J. & Schlosser, P. (Eds.) Is Sustainainability Feasible? (in press)	Publications
Acting for the Greater Good: Identification with Group Determines Choices in Sequential Contribution Dilemmas	2015-07-23	Arora, P., Logg, J., Larrick, R. \| Journal of Behavioral Decision Making	Publications	Abstract: In mixed-motive interactions, defection is the rational and common response to the defection of others. In some cases, however, group members not only cooperate in the face of defection but also compensate for the shortfalls caused by others' defection. In one field and two lab studies, we examined when group members were willing to compensate for versus match defection using sequential dilemmas. We found that the level of identification with the broader group increased willingness to compensate for intragroup defection, even when it was personally costly. Compensating for a defecting partner's actions, however, is not an act of unconditional cooperation: It is accompanied by a lack of trust in the errant group member and a desire to be perceived as more ethical. Cooperation by others, on the other hand, is matched independent of whether the cooperator was an in-group or out-group member. We find similar patterns of compensation and matching when the personal cost involved contributing money or effort.
Adapting to an uncertain climate on the Great Plains: testing hypotheses on historical populations.	2009-08-01	Balstad, R., Russell, R., Gil, V., Marx, S. \| In N. Adger, I. Lorenzoni, & K. O'Brien (Eds.), Adapting to Climate Change: Thresholds, Values, Governance.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 283-295	Publications	Excerpt: We begin this chapter with two questions: first, how do people adapt to climate uncertainty? Second, can the historical past serve as a laboratory for testing and understanding human responses to climate uncertainty? We examine these questions in the context of a study of adaptation to climate variability in a county in the northern great plains of the United States during and after its initial agricultural settlement in the late nineteenth century. the purpose of the study is to understand how a newly arrived population of european immigrants and european-origin settlers from the eastern United States adapted to the harsh and uncertain climate conditions on the great plains. But rather than constructing a historical narrative on how climate influenced the settlement experience, we will instead examine current theory on decision-making related to adaptation to climate uncertainty and study how the settlement experience in the great plains can illuminate and contribute to this body of theory. 10.1017/CBO9780511596667.019
Adding Punch to Influence Public Opinion	2010-07-25	The New York Times	CRED in the News	CRED Co-Director Kenny Broad and PI Eric Johnson in collaboration with the Harmony Institute
Addressing Climate Change and Migration in Asia and the Pacific	2012-08-03	Edes, B., Gemenne, F., Hill, J., Reckien, D.	Publications	978-92-9092-611-5
Affordability of the National Flood Insurance Program: Application to Charleston County, South Carolina	2015-11-25	Zhao, W., Kunreuther, H., & Czajkowski, J. \| National Hazards Review, 10.1061/(ASCE)NH.1527-6996.0000201, 04015020	Publications	Abstract: In March 2014, Congress passed legislation delaying the phasing-in of premium increases on discounted flood insurance policies that had been authorized in July 2012 by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act. This reversal highlights the tension between the realization of risk-based premiums and affordability of flood insurance for homeowners in flood-prone areas. This study on Charleston County, South Carolina, seeks to understand how the tension can be resolved using a voucher program coupled with required mitigation. It specifically focuses on home elevation as the mitigation method. This paper demonstrates a potential average increase of 108 to 159% for high-risk single-family properties in Special Flood Hazard Areas in Charleston moving from a current discounted premium to a full risk-based premium as proposed by the 2012 legislation. Implementation of the proposed voucher program coupled with required mitigation can reduce government expenditures by more than half over a program that does not require mitigation if the costs of elevating homes are around $25,000 and insurance policies are located in high hazard flood zones. In the coastal flood zones, cost savings are achievable even when the cost to elevate the house is as much as $75,000. However, the authors also find several conditions under which mitigation does not lead to reductions in the voucher cost, such as when the policyholder’s household income is below $10,000 or when elevation cost is unusually high.
Africa Experiments With Climate Insurance-- for $5 a Year	2009-09-30	The New York Times	CRED in the News
AgClimate: a case study in participatory decision support system development.	2007-10-05	Breuer, N.E., Cabrera, V.E., Ingram, K.T., Broad, K., & Hildebrandt, P.E. \| Climatic Change, 87, 385-403	Publications	Abstract: Potential economic benefit exists from the use of seasonal climate forecasts in agriculture. To assess potential end user attitudes toward and interests in climate data, and to provide inputs from users to the development of decision support tools, we conducted a series of surveys. Survey results affected the design, development, and enhancement of AgClimate, a web-based decision support system for minimizing climate risks to agriculture. The overall process is an example of how decision makers can participate in the research process, thereby improving the value and relevance of research products such as decision support systems.10.1007/s10584-007-9323-7
Agent-based Modeling of a Rental Market for Agricultural Land in the Argentine Pampas.	2010-07-05	Bert, F., Podestá, G. P. ,Rovere, S., North, M., Menéndez, A., Laciana, C., Macal, C., Weber, E. & Sydelko, P. \| In Swayne, D., Yang, W., Voinov, A.A., Rizzoli, A. Filatova, T. (Eds.). Proceedings of the iEMSs	Publications	Abstract: More than half of land in the Argentine Pampas is cropped by tenants. The importance of production on rented land motivated development of a LAnd Rental MArket (LARMA) model with endogenous formation of Land Rental Price (LRP). LARMA is a “hybrid” model that relies partly on easy-to-implement concepts from neoclassical economics, but addresses drawbacks of this approach by being integrated into an agentbased model that involves heterogeneous agents interacting in a dynamic environment. LRP formation assumes economic equilibrium: it is the price at which supply of rental land area equals land demand. LRP depends on (a) the “willing to accept” price (WTAP) of owners renting out land due to lack of capital or dissatisfaction with recent economic progress (a Minimum Progress Rate, MPR, is targeted), and (b) the “willing to pay” price (WTPP) and working capital (WC) of potential tenants. Land owners base WTAP on estimated profits they could achieve from operating their farms. Potential tenants base WTPP on their target gross margin for the upcoming cycle. Initial experiments with simplified economic contexts (input and output prices) did not show significant differences in regional land tenure from LARMA vs. use of an exogenous, fixed LRP. Nevertheless, simulated LRP trajectories reproduced observed dynamics: prices followed consistently the trajectories of conditions driving crop yields and profits. Consideration of MPR induced many land owners to rent out their farms, thus increasing the proportion of rented land. LARMA is a first attempt to translate equilibrium-based models into a model involving agent heterogeneity and social embeddedness. Many LARMA components will be used in a subsequent model with full bilateral transactions.
Agricultural decision making in the Argentine Pampas: Modeling the interaction between uncertain and complex environments and heterogeneous and complex decision makers	2008	Podestá, G., Weber, E.U., Laciana, C., Bert, F., Letson, D. \| In T. Kugler, J.C. Smith, T. Connolly, Y. Son (Eds.) Decision Modeling & Behavior in Complex & Uncertain Environments, Springer Optimization & Its Applications, 2(1), 57-76	Publications	Summary: Simulated outcomes of agricultural production decisions in the Argentine Pampas were used to examine “optimal” land allocations among diﬀerent crops identiﬁed by maximization of the objective functions associated with expected utility and prospect theories. We propose a more mathematically tractable formulation for the prospect theory value-function maximization, and explore results for a broad parameter space. Optimal actions diﬀer among some objective functions and parameter values, especially for land tenants, whose enterprise allocation is less constrained by rotations. Our results demonstrate in a nonlaboratory decision context that psychologically plausible deviations from EU maximization matter. 10.1007/978-0-387-77131-1_3
Aiding decision-making to reduce the impacts of climate change." Journal of Consumer Policy		Kunreuther, H., Weber, E. \| Journal of Consumer Policy	Publications	Utilizing theory and empirical insights from psychology and behavioural economics, this paper examines individuals’ cognitive and motivational barriers to adopting climate change adaptation and mitigation measures that increase consumer welfare. We explore various strategies that take into account the simplified decision-making processes used by individuals and resulting biases. We make these points by working through two examples: (1) investments in energy efficiency products and new technology and (2) adaptation measures to reduce property damage from future floods and hurricanes. In both cases there is a reluctance to undertake these measures due to high and certain upfront costs, delayed and probabilistic benefits, and behavioural biases related to this asymmetry. The use of choice architecture through framing and the use of default options coupled with short-term incentives and long-term contracts can encourage greater investment in these measures.
Alaskan Opinions on Global Warming	2006-01-01	Leiserowitz, A. & Craciun, J. \| Eugene: Decision Research, Report No. 06-10	Publications, Reports
Alaskans Don't Like Global Warming	2006-10-17	The Frontal Cortex Blog	CRED in the News
American Conscious Waking Up to Climate Change	2007-07-07	NPR	CRED in the News
American risk perceptions: Is climate change dangerous?	2005	Leiserowitz, A. \| Risk Analysis, 25(6), 1433-1442	Publications	Abstract: Public risk perceptions can fundamentally compel or constrain political, economic, and social action to address particular risks. Public support or opposition to climate policies (e.g., treaties, regulations, taxes, subsidies) will be greatly influenced by public perceptions of the risks and dangers posed by global climate change. This article describes results from a national study (2003) that examined the risk perceptions and connotative meanings of global warming in the American mind and found that Americans perceived climate change as a moderate risk that will predominantly impact geographically and temporally distant people and places. This research also identified several distinct interpretive communities, including naysayers and alarmists, with widely divergent perceptions of climate change risks. Thus, “dangerous” climate change is a concept contested not only among scientists and policymakers, but among the American public as well. 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00690.x
American Water Knowledge Seems Murky	2014-03-13	Cynthia Graber \| Scientific American	CRED in the News
Americans have no idea how much water they're using	2014-03-10	Kate Yoshida \| Ars Technica	CRED in the News
Americans have no idea how much water we use, or how to conserve it	2014-03-05	Eve Andrews \| Grist	CRED in the News
Americans use twice as much water as they think they do, study says	2014-03-03	Monte Morin \| Everett, Washington Herald	CRED in the News
Americans use twice as much water as they think they do, study says	2014-03-03	Monte Morin \| LA Times	CRED in the News
Americans use twice as much water as they think they do, study says	2014-03-03	Monte Morin \| The Chicago Tribune	CRED in the News
Americans' sense of energy savings? Small change.	2010-08-16	The Daily Climate	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
An agent based model to simulate structural and land use changes in agricultural systems of the argentine pampas	2011-09-24	Bert, F., Podestá, G., Rovere, S., Menéndez, A., North, M., Tatara, E., Laciana, C., Weber, E., Toranzo, F. \| Ecological Modeling, 222 (19): pp3486-3499	Publications	Abstract: The Argentine Pampas, one of the main agricultural areas in the world, recently has undergone significant changes in land use and structural characteristics of agricultural production systems. Concerns about the environmental and societal impacts of the changes motivated development of an agent-based model (ABM) to gain insight on processes underlying recent observed patterns. The model is described following a standard protocol (ODD). Results are discussed for an initial set of simplified simulations performed to understand the processes that generated and magnified the changes in the Pampas. Changes in the structure of agricultural production and land tenure seem to be driven by differences among farmers’ ability to generate sufficient agricultural income to remain in business. In turn, as no off-farm or credit is modeled, economic sustainability is tied to initial resource endowment (area cropped). Farmers operating small areas are economically unviable and must lease out their farms to farmers operating larger areas. This leads to two patterns: (a) a concentration of production (fewer farmers operating larger areas) and, (b) an increase in the area operated by tenants. The simulations showed an increase of soybean area, linked to the higher profitability of this crop. Despite the stylized nature of initial simulations, all emerging patterns are highly consistent with changes observed in the Pampas.
An economic analysis of climate adaptations to hurricane risk in St. Lucia	2014-04-24	Ou-Yang, C., Kunreuther, H., Michel-Kerjan, E\| The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice , 38(3), pp. 521-546	Publications	We introduce a catastrophic risk model that captures the cumulative impact of climate change on future expected losses from hurricane risk. The annual growth rates of expected losses due to change in climate patterns (or “climate change factor”) are estimated based upon historical storm activities in the Atlantic Basin and catastrophe modelling. The percentiles of the climate change factor are then used to measure expected hurricane losses in the Caribbean Island of St. Lucia. We also undertake benefit-cost analyses on four adaptation measures for homes in St. Lucia and determine when those are cost-effective for different time horizons and discount rates with and without climate change. Adaptation makes an enormous difference and can offset additional losses even with a high climate change factor by making houses much more resilient. Enforcing these protection measures will be critical.
Anthropologies of the Future: on the social performativity of (climate) forecasts	2013	Taddei, R., Kopnina, H., Shoreman-Ouimet, E. \| In Routledge (Eds.) Environmental Anthropology: Future Directions, Chapter 11	Publications
Anthropologists Release Statement on Humanity and Climate Change	2015-02-09	PRWeb	CRED in the News
Arctic sea ice reaches historic low as scientists warn of regional, global impact	2012-09-19	Arctic sea ice reaches historic low as scientists warn of regional, global impact	CRED in the News
Are social prediction errors universal? Predicting compliance with a direct request across cultures	2011-01-09	Bohns, V.K., Handgraaf, M.J.J, Sun, J., Aaldering, H., Mao, C., Logg, J. \| Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47(3): 676-680	Publications
Are we willing to give what it takes? Willingness to pay for climate change adaptation in developing countries	2015-10-26	O'Garra, T & Mourato, S \| Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy	Publications
Art Makes Environmental Change Real	2014-01-24	Conservation Magazine	CRED in the News
Art, Science & Climate Change (Tipping Point event)	2009-12-08	Culturebot	CRED in the News
Asymmetric discounting in intertemporal choice: A query theory account.	2007-01-01	Weber, E. U., Johnson, E. J., Milch, K.F., Chang, H., Brodscholl, J.C., & Goldstein, D.G. \| Psychological Science, 18(6), 516-523.	Publications	Abstract: People are impatient and discount future rewards more when they are asked to delay consumption than when they are offered the chance to accelerate consumption. The three experiments reported here provide a process-level account for this asymmetry, with implications for designing decision environments that promote less impulsivity. In Experiment 1, a thought-listing procedure showed that people decompose discount valuation into two queries. Whether one considers delayed or accelerated receipt of a gift certificate influences the order in which memory is queried to support immediate versus delayed consumption, and the order of queries affects the relative number of patient versus impatient thoughts. Relative frequency and clustering of impatient thoughts predicts discounting and mediates the discounting asymmetry. Experiment 2 implicated query order causally: When participants listed reasons for immediate versus delayed consumption in the order used spontaneously in acceleration and delay decisions, the discounting asymmetry was replicated; reversing the order in which reasons were listed eliminated the asymmetry. The results of Experiment 3, which used an implicit-memory task, support a memory-interference account of the effect of query order. 10.1111/j.1467-
Bahamas' 'blue holes' hold wonders and weird science	2010-07-21	USA Today	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Co-Director Kenny Broad
Before and after The Day After Tomorrow: A U.S. study of climate change risk perception.	2004-11-01	Leiserowitz, A. \| Environment, 46(9), 22-37	Publications
Behavioral multi-criteria decision analysis: further elaborations on the TODIM method.	2012-01-01	Autran Monteiro Gomes, L. F. and X. I. González \| Foundations of Computing and Decision Sciences, 37(1): 3-8. Pozna&nacute; University of Technology, ISSN 0867-6356.	Publications	Abstract: This short communication reviews the role of the TODIM method within behavioral decision theory and presents its genesis. Two important aspects of the method such as generalizing that method towards cumulative prospect theory and the choice of a reference point are further clarified.10.2478/v10209-011-0001-1
Ben Orlove on the Brian Lehrer Show: Climate Science and Sandy	2012-11-15	WNYC: The Brian Lehrer Show	CRED in the News
Better Car Labeling Could Pump Up Fuel Efficiency	2014-06-01	David Biello \| Scientific American	CRED in the News
Beyond the “fit”: introducing climate forecasts among organic farmers in Georgia (United States)	2011-09-20	Furman, C., Roncoli, C., Crane, T., & Hoogenboom, G. \| Climatic Change 109(3-4), 791-799	Publications	Abstract: Organic farmers are a prime clientele for climate services by virtue of their social profile and vulnerability of produce to climate extremes. The study draws on an online survey and in-depth interviews with organic farmers in Georgia (United States). It shows that organic farmers access and act on climate information in ways that reflect their emphasis on diversified and flexible systems. They favor a pluralistic knowledge base that integrates scientific expertise with place-based experience and intuitive understandings. Their management style combines information at multiple temporal scales and draws on a range of technical and social resources. Translating climate forecasts into usable science for organic farming requires attention to the identities, commitments, and relationships that define the organic farming community.10.1007/s10584-011-0238-y
Blame Cognitive Biases When Efforts To Conserve Water Aren't Effective	2015-05-05	Shankar Vedantam \| NPR	CRED in the News
Blame: The Hidden (and Difficult) Side of Climate Change Debate.	2008-11-01	Taddei, R. \| Anthropology News, 49:45-46	Publications
Building Bridges to Where? Sustainability Collaborations and the Arts of Ethnography	2015-03-18	Nicole Peterson \| EnviroSociety	CRED in the News
California drought: authorities struggle to impose water conservation measures	2014-03-11	Suzanne Goldenberg \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
California tightening water-use rules for urinals, faucets amid drought	2015-04-08	Chirs Megerian, Monte Morin, Taylor Goldenstein \| LA Times	CRED in the News
Campus Catalyst Awards recognize sustainability efforts at IU Bloomington	2014-11-14	IU Bloomington Newsroom	CRED in the News
Can art inspire climate change action? An ice installation aims to do just that	2014-10-23	Elke Weber, Irena Bauman, and Olafur Eliasson \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
Can Smiley Faces (and a 14-Step Program to Stop Overconsumption) Save the Global Climate?	2010-03-16	Scientific American	CRED in the News	Featuring the Managing Director of CRED, Sabine Marx
Can the Military Help Change the Way We Think About Energy?	2015-01-27	Schuyler Null \| New Security Beat	CRED in the News
Catalyzing frontiers in water-climate-society research: A view from early career scientists and junior faculty.	2012-04-01	McNeeley, S. M., Tessendorf, S. A., Lazrus, H., Heikkila, T., Ferguson, I. M., Arrigo, S. J., Attari, S. Z., Cianfrani, C. M., Dilling, L., Gurdak, J. J., Kampf, S. K., Kauneckis, D., Kirchhoff, C. J., Lee, J., Litner, B. R., Mahoney, K. M., Opitz-Staplet	Publications	Introduction: Changes in the availability and distribution of water have substantial effects on humans and the ecosystems upon which we depend. While we have always experienced variability in the availability of water across a variety of time scales, anthropogenic climate change will likely bring substantial additional effects on water cycles and water resource management, such as changes in timing, amount, and patterns of precipitation; decreasing snow packs; enhanced droughts; and more frequent and intense floods and storms, among others. The scientific community faces the challenge of helping societies plan for climate and water uncertainties in the context of complex and changing socioenvironmental processes such as multiple and competing water demands, population growth, land-use changes, and energy extraction and production. Meeting this challenge requires utilizing the strengths of diverse disciplines and working in synergistic collaboration with key stakeholders. 10.1175/BAMS-D-11-00221.1
Catastrophe model based quantification of riverine and storm surge, flood risk in texas	2013-06-19	Czajkowski, J., Kunreuther, H., Michel-Kerjan, E. \| Risk Analysis , 33(12), pp.1532-1552	Publications	The development of catastrophe models in recent years allows for assessment of the flood hazard much more effectively than when the federally run National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968. We propose and then demonstrate a methodological approach to determine pure premiums based on the entire distribution of possible flood events. We apply hazard, exposure, and vulnerability analyses to a sample of 300,000 single-family residences in two counties in Texas (Travis and Galveston) using state-of-the-art flood catastrophe models. Even in zones of similar flood risk classification by FEMA there is substantial variation in exposure between coastal and inland flood risk. For instance, homes in the designated moderate-risk X500/B zones in Galveston are exposed to a flood risk on average 2.5 times greater than residences in X500/B zones in Travis. The results also show very similar average annual loss (corrected for exposure) for a number of residences despite their being in different FEMA flood zones. We also find significant storm-surge exposure outside of the FEMA designated storm-surge risk zones. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of a microanalysis of flood exposure. The process of aggregating risk at a flood zone level—as currently undertaken by FEMA—provides a false sense of uniformity. As our analysis indicates, the technology to delineate the flood risks exists today.
Catastrophe risk models for evaluating disaster risk reduction investments in developing countries	2012-12-12	Michel-Kerjan, E., Hochrainer-Stigler, S., Kunreuther, H., Linnerooth-Bayer, J., Mechler, R., Muir-Wood, R., Ranger, N., Vaziri, P., Young, M. \| Risk Analysis , 33(6), pp. 447-450	Publications	Major natural disasters in recent years have had high human and economic costs, and triggered record high postdisaster relief from governments and international donors. Given the current economic situation worldwide, selecting the most effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures is critical. This is especially the case for low- and middle-income countries, which have suffered disproportionally more economic and human losses from disasters. This article discusses a methodology that makes use of advanced probabilistic catastrophe models to estimate benefits of DRR measures. We apply such newly developed models to generate estimates for hurricane risk on residential structures on the island of St. Lucia, and earthquake risk on residential structures in Istanbul, Turkey, as two illustrative case studies. The costs and economic benefits for selected risk reduction measures are estimated taking account of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. We conclude by emphasizing the advantages and challenges of catastrophe model-based cost-benefit analyses for DRR in developing countries.
Celebrity, Science And The Letter K	2014-08-12	Lynn O'Rourke Hayes \| Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Center for Research on Environmental Decisions Launched	2005-05-03	Columbia News	CRED in the News
Change in Labels Could Increase Interest in Fuel Efficiency	2014-05-14	Duke Fuqua School of Business	CRED in the News
Changing household behaviors to curb climate change: How hard can it be?	2011-02-01	Attari, S. Z., DeKay, M. L., Davidson, C. I., & Bruine de Bruin, W. \| Sustainability: The Journal of Record, 4(1), 9-11.	Publications	10.1089/SUS.2010.9724
Changing the Terms of Debate in Climate Change	2015-06-23	AAA Global Climate Change Task Force \| American Anthropological Association	CRED in the News
Channeling globality: The 1997-98 El Niño climate event in Peru	2007-05-01	Broad, K., & Orlove, B. American Ethnologist, 34(2), 285-302.	Publications	Abstract: We examine the unfolding of a planetary climate event, the 1997–98 El Niño, in a single country, Peru. Rather than seeing the worldwide attention to the event as an instance of globalization, we look at the actors who, in our terms, channeled globality by evoking a worldwide scale to build connections between disparate elements in cultural and political projects. We document how participants in Peruvian media and in everyday conversations attended selectively to certain international images and ideas as they related to the El Niño event and reworked them in distinctively Peruvian fashion. We also examine the specific context and tactics that allowed the state to succeed in channeling globality to further its ends.10.1525/ae.2007.34.2.285
Choices, Options, and Constraints: Decisions in Natural Resource Management.		Peterson, N \| Human Organization 69(1):54-64	Publications
Cleaner for the Environment, Not for the Dishes	2010-09-18	The New York Times	CRED in the News	CRED Co-Director Elke Weber quoted in NY Times Environment piece
Cleaning, Protecting, or Abating? Making Indigenous Fire Management “Work” in Northern Australia	2015-03-01	Petty, A.M., deKoninck, V., Orlove, B. \| Journal of Ethnobiology , 35(1), 140-162	Publications	Abstract: Kakadu National Park in northern Australia was one of the first jointly managed parks in the world, and offers an important case study of how public institutions and indigenous communities interact in the management of landscapes. In the 1990s, an extensive fire management program was instituted in Kakadu. The aim of this program was to shift the timing of fires from the late dry season to the early dry season, a pattern that on its surface more closely reflects precontact Aboriginal fire patterns. Despite broad success in this fire regime shift, Kakadu has come under particularly intense criticism from local Aboriginal communities, as well as the conservation sector and the wider public, for failures in fire management. These perceived failures are, however, assumed to be a feature of Kakadu specifically, rather than early season burning generally. Consequently, the model of extensive fire management in the early dry season continues to be a key goal for Aboriginal-owned lands across northern Australia, with early-burning projects that derive funding tied to reduced net carbon emissions now emerging as the most promising potential for reinstating indigenous fire management in northern Australia. We argue, however, that these new emissions-reducing programs run the risk of following the same fraught path of dissatisfaction and disassociation as Kakadu, because it is inherent in the nature of institutionalized management programs to replace the complexity and contingency of indigenous fire management with standardized goals. In so doing, such programs treat indigenous people as workers executing plans developed by others rather than as genuine partners in the design and implementation of management programs.
Climate and human health: Physics, policy and possibilities.	2008	Broad, K., Bolson, J., Clement, A., Balstad, R., Marx, S., Peterson, N., & Ramirez, I. \| In P. Walsh, S. Smith, L. Fleming, H. Solo-Gabriele, & W. Gerwick (Eds.), Oceans and Human Health: Risks and Remedies from the Sea. New York: Elsevier	Publications
Climate and society: What is the human dimension?	2008-07-01	Balstad, R. & Hourcade, J.C. \| In C. Gautier & J-L. Fellous (Eds.), Facing Climate Change Together. New York: Cambridge University Press.	Publications	Summary: The vast majority of climate scientists now agree that human-induced climate change is a reality, but there is much ongoing research and debate. Nevertheless, our global society is confronted with the urgent need for a wise response to potential climate change. This volume brings together scientists from the US and Europe to review the state of the art in climate change science. It draws from the most recent assessment reports of the IPCC, but scientific jargon has been minimized for readers from different backgrounds. Each chapter provides a description of a particular aspect of the climate problem, its role in current climate change, its potential future impacts, and its societal importance. This book is written for scientists and students in a wide range of fields, such as atmospheric science, physics, chemistry, biology, geography, geology and socioeconomics, who are seeking a coherent and broad review of climate change issues.
Climate and Weather Discourse in Anthropology: From Determinism to Uncertain Futures.	2009-01-01	Peterson, N., & Broad, K. \| In Crate, S. & Nutall, M. (Eds.) Anthropology and Climate Change: From Encounters to Actions, Left Coast Press: Walnut Creek, CA	Publications	Introduction: Global climate change has become an increasingly visible topic in public culture over the past few decades, and will likely dominate environmental, political, and social agendas for some time to come. Only in the last few years has a critical mass of anthropologists begun to focus on the social practices and cultural implications surrounding the production of climate change models and scenarios, the communication and interpretation of climate information, climate change causes and solutions, and the implications of its impacts for people worldwide. ISBN 978-1-59874-334-0
Climate Change Adaptation: Lessons from Unlikely Sources	2013-06-03	St. John, C. Reports of the National Council for Science Education 33:3	Publications
Climate Change and the Medical Analogy	2014-04-30	David Bergman \| Treehugger	CRED in the News
Climate Change and the Most Vulnerable Among Us: Lessons learned from an AVSI project funded by the EU	2014-05-12	ASVI-USA	CRED in the News
Climate change communication heats up	2014-06-30	Lea Winerman, American Psychological Association \| Monitor on Psychology	CRED in the News
Climate Change Is A Major Threat To Us All, But Here’s Why You Might Not Care	2016-05-05	Lydia O'Connor \| The Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Climate Change Is Helping Invasive Species Spread Northward	2014-04-18	Dennis Mersereau \| The Vane	CRED in the News
Climate Change or Public Health: Which Matters More?	2014-08-01	David Funkhouser \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Climate Change Raises Stakes for Coast	2012-10-29	CNN Opinion	CRED in the News
Climate change response in Europe: what’s the reality? Analysis of adaptation and mitigation plans from 200 urban areas in 11 countries	2013-11-23	Reckien, D., Flacke J., Dawson, R. J., Heidrich O., Olazabal, M. Foley, A., Hamann, J. J.-P., Orru, H., Salvia, M., De Gregorio Hurtado, S., Geneletti, D., Pietrapertosa, F. (2013). Climatic Change.	Publications
Climate change risk perception and policy preferences: The role of affect, imagery, and values	2006	Leiserowitz, A. \| Climatic Change, 77, 45-72	Publications	Abstract: A national, representative survey of the U.S. public found that Americans have moderate climate change risk perceptions, strongly support a variety of national and international policies to mitigate climate change, and strongly oppose several carbon tax proposals. Drawing on the theoretical distinction between analytic and experiential decision-making, this study found that American risk perceptions and policy support are strongly influenced by experiential factors, including affect, imagery, and values, and demonstrates that public responses to climate change are influenced by both psychological and socio-cultural factors. 10.1007/s10584-006-9059-9
Climate Change, Insurability, and Liability	2007-01-01	Kunreuther, H., & Michel-Kerjan, E. \| University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 155(6), 1795-1842.	CRED in the News	Abstract: This paper focuses on the interaction between uncertainty and insurability in the context of some of the risks associated with climate change. It discusses the evolution of insured losses due to weather-related disasters over the past decade, and the key drivers of the sharp increases in both economic and insured catastrophe losses over the past 20 years. In particular we examine the impact of development in hazard-prone areas and of global warming on the potential for catastrophic losses in the future. In this context we discuss the implications for insurance risk capital and the capacity of the insurance industry to handle large-scale events. A key question that needs to be addressed is the factors that determine the insurability of a risk and the extent of coverage offered by the private sector to provide protection against extreme events where there is significant uncertainty surrounding the probability and consequences of a catastrophic loss. We discuss the concepts of insurability by focusing on coverage for natural hazards, such as earthquakes, hurricanes and floods. The paper also focuses on the liability issues associated with global climate change, and possible implications for insurers (including D&O), given the difficulty in identifying potential defendants, tracing harm to their actions and apportioning damages among them. The paper concludes by suggesting ways that insurers can help mitigate future damages from global climate change by providing premium reductions and rate credits to companies investing in risk-reducing measures. Publisher's page
Climate change: how businesses can deal with America's most divisive issue	2014-06-12	Greg Harman \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
Climate change: how to talk about bad news	2014-04-24	Sarah Gardner \| Marketplace	CRED in the News
Climate Change: People and Cities	2009-12-14	WNYC: The Brian Lehrer Show	CRED in the News	Featuring Earth Institute postdoctoral fellow at CRED, Shahzeen Attari
Climate change: world’s wealthiest understand, but only half see it as threat	2015-07-27	Oliver Milman \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
Climate ethics at a multidisciplinary crossroads: four directions for future scholarship	2015-06-01	Markowitz, E. M., Grasso, M., Jamieson, D. Climatic Change, 130(3): 465-474	Publications	Abstract: In recent years, the field of climate ethics has grown into a truly multidisciplinary endeavor. Climate ethics scholars are pursuing both normative and positive questions about climate change using many different approaches drawn from a wide diversity of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives. Now, the field stands at a multidisciplinary crossroads, delineated in large part by two interrelated considerations: what are the key research questions most in need of multidisciplinary attention and what can be done to move the insights and implications of climate ethics scholarship into real-world climate decision-making. Here, we identify four directions for near-future climate ethics research that we believe are both in need of further examination and likely to be of interest to a diverse coalition of decision-makers working “on the ground”: geoengineering; scope of ethical consideration; responsibility of actors; and, hazards, vulnerabilities and impacts. Regardless of the specific questions they choose to pursue, multidisciplinary climate ethics researchers should strive to conduct accessible and actionable research that both answers the questions decision-makers are already asking as well as helps shape those questions to make decision-making processes more inclusive and ethically-grounded.
Climate psychology in cartoons: clues for solving the messaging mystery	2009-11-05	Grist	CRED in the News
Climate, Society, and Caesar’s Wife	2010-04-01	Balstad, R. \| Weather, Climate, and Society, 2(2): 89-90	Publications	10.1175/2010WCAS1072.1
Climate, stream flow prediction and water management in northeast Brazil: Societal trends and forecast value.	2007	Broad, K., Pfaff, A., Taddei, R., Sankarasubramanian, A., Lall, U., & de Assis de Souza Filho, F. \| Climatic Change, 84, 217-239.	Publications	Abstract: We assess the potential benefits from innovative forecasts of the stream flows that replenish reservoirs in the semi-arid state of Ceará, Brazil. Such forecasts have many potential applications. In Ceará, they matter for both water-allocation and participatory-governance issues that echo global debates. Our qualitative analysis, based upon extensive fieldwork with farmers, agencies, politicians and other key actors in the water sector, stresses that forecast value changes as a society shifts. In the case of Ceará, current constraints on the use of these forecasts are likely to be reduced by shifts in water demand, water allocation in the agricultural Jaguaribe Valley, participatory processes for water allocation between this valley and the capital city of Fortaleza, and risk perception. Such changes in the water sector can also have major distributional impacts.10.1007/s10584-007-9257-0
Climate-based estimation of hydrologic inflow into Lake Okeechobee, Florida.	2005	Miralles-Wilhelm, F., Trimble, P.J., Podestá, G., Letson, D., & Broad, K. \| Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management, 131(5), 394-401	Publications	Abstract: This paper presents a comparative evaluation of methods for climate-based estimation of the net inflow rate into Lake Okeechobee, Fla. The estimated net inflow rate is used by the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD) to support the management and operations of the Lake Okeechobee hydrologic system. The first method evaluated in this paper (Croley) uses rainfall outlooks provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center (CPC) to calculate a weighed average of historical inflow values for each month. The second method evaluated in this paper (SFWMD Empirical) uses a linear regression on statistics of historical data to predict the net inflow rate. These two methods were developed and have been used operationally by the SFWMD since 2000. Three new methods are presented and comparatively evaluated to gauge their ability in estimating net inflow rates. The first two of these methods are based on CPC issued forecasts in decile probability density format. The remaining method is based on a subsampling technique for “peer” wet∕dry years in the historical record and is found to yield better results in a retrospective analysis. For extreme climatic events on the historical record, CPC rainfall outlooks are found not to yield a large enough shift in probabilities for forecasts to match observed net inflow rates; this is especially noticeable during El Niño Southern Oscillation events. Recommendations are made for potential improvements to climate-based net inflow rate estimation methods, particularly in regard to their ability to reproduce observed results for net inflow into Lake Okeechobee in the presence of an extreme climatic event, as well as over an extended climatological period. 10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9496(2005)131:5(394)
Climate-linked insurance could help poor farmers offset crop failure risk	2015-01-27	Wilson Dizard \| Aljazeera America	CRED in the News
Climates of anxiety: Comparing experience of glacier retreat across three mountain regions	2013-02-01	Brugger, J., Dunbar, K.W., Jurt, C., Orlove, B. \| Emotion, Space, and Society 6, 4-13	Publications
Climatic information and decision-making in maize crop production systems of the Argentinean Pampas	2006-06-01	Bert, F.E., Satorre, E.H., Toranzo, F.R., & Podestá, G.P. (2006). \| Agricultural Systems, 88, 180-204.	Publications	Abstract: In many places, predictions of regional climate variability associated with El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phenomenon offer the potential to improve farmers’ decision-making, i.e., mitigate negative impacts of adverse conditions or take advantage of favorable conditions. However, various conditions must be met for a forecast to result in enhanced decision-making. First, information has to be relevant to, and compatible with production decisions. Second, alternative options must exist for a given decision and these should result in different outcomes under different climate conditions. Third, decision-makers should be able to evaluate the outcomes of alternative actions. In this paper, we explored these conditions as part of a case study targeting maize production systems in the Argentine Pampas. The decision-making process was described via “decision maps” that (a) characterized the main decisions involved in maize production systems and their timing, (b) identified decisions sensitive to climate, and (c) provided a realistic set of options for each decision under different seasonal climate scenarios. Then, we used crop simulation models to assess the outcomes of tailoring crop management to predicted climate conditions. We found differences between the options selected by regional advisors for each climate scenario and those that maximized average profits in the simulation exercise. In particular, differences were most noticeable in preferred nitrogen fertilization rates. While advisors tended to lower fertilization in response to a forecast of dry spring conditions, associated with La Niña events, the simulation exercise showed a consistent drop in maize yields and profits with low N rates even in La Niña years. Advisors and producers’ aversion to risk can be determining these differences, since the analysis showed that the probability of negative economic results are minimized under their decision rule. The procedure was effective to meet some of the conditions required to use climate information and to determine the value of incorporating ENSO-related information to effectively improve the maize decision process. However, results suggest that better knowledge of farmers decision rules are necessary when the value of using climatic information is estimated and interpreted.10.1016/j.agsy.2005.03.007
Cold Outside? Forecast Calls for an Uptick in Global Warming Disbelief	2014-01-12	Scientific American	CRED in the News
Cold, Hard Grass	2009-07-31	Conservation Magazine	CRED in the News
Combining analytical frameworks to assess livelihood vulnerability to climate change and analyse adaptation options		Reed, M.S., Podestá, G., Fazey, I., Geeson, N., Hessel, R., Hubacek, K., Letson, D., Nainggolan, D., Prell, C., Rickenbach, M.G., Ritsema, C., Schwilch, G., Stringer, L.C., Thomas, A.D. \| Ecological Economics , pp. 66-77	Publications	Experts working on behalf of international development organisations need better tools to assist land managers in developing countries maintain their livelihoods, as climate change puts pressure on the ecosystem services that they depend upon. However, current understanding of livelihood vulnerability to climate change is based on a fractured and disparate set of theories and methods. This review therefore combines theoretical insights from sustainable livelihoods analysis with other analytical frameworks (including the ecosystem services framework, diffusion theory, social learning, adaptive management and transitions management) to assess the vulnerability of rural livelihoods to climate change. This integrated analytical framework helps diagnose vulnerability to climate change, whilst identifying and comparing adaptation options that could reduce vulnerability, following four broad steps: i) determine likely level of exposure to climate change, and how climate change might interact with existing stresses and other future drivers of change; ii) determine the sensitivity of stocks of capital assets and flows of ecosystem services to climate change; iii) identify factors influencing decisions to develop and/or adopt different adaptation strategies, based on innovation or the use/substitution of existing assets; and iv) identify and evaluate potential trade-offs between adaptation options. The paper concludes by identifying interdisciplinary research needs for assessing the vulnerability of livelihoods to climate change.
Comment: Our flawed perceptions of risk	2015-03-23	Katherine Fox-Glassman \| Earth Magazine	CRED in the News
Communicating Climate Change in Asia	2013-06-01	Asia Pacific Affairs Council Journal, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University	CRED in the News
Communication and mental processes: Experiential and analytic processing of uncertain climate information	2007-02-01	Marx, S.M., Weber, E.U., Orlove, B.S., Leiserowitz, A., Krantz, D.H., Roncoli, C., & Phillips, J. \| Global Environmental Change, 17(1), 47-58	Publications	Abstract: People process uncertainty information in two qualitatively different systems. Most climate forecast communications assume people process information analytically. Yet people also rely heavily on an experiential processing system. Better understanding of experiential processing may lead to more comprehensible risk communication products. Retranslation of statistical information into concrete (vicarious) experience facilitates intuitive understanding of probabilistic information and motivates contingency planning. Sharing vicarious experience in group discussions or simulations of forecasts, decisions, and outcomes provides a richer and more representative sample of relevant experience. The emotional impact of the concretization of abstract risks motivates action in ways not provided by an analytic understanding. 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2006.10.004
Comparing knowledge of and experience with climate change across three glaciated mountain regions.	2012-01-01	Dunbar, K.W., J. Brugger, C. Jurt, and B. Orlove. \| In A. Peter Castro, Dan Taylor and David W. Brokensha (Eds.), Climate Change and Threatened Communities, 93-106. Rugby, Warwickshire, UK: Practical Action Publishing.	Publications
Connecting on Climate: a new communications guide	2015-01-15	Adam Corner \| Talking Climate	CRED in the News
Contemplate Your Own Death, Save the World	2012-07-04	Treehugger	CRED in the News	CRED Principal Investigator Rick Larrick and colleagues at the Duke Fuqua School of Business co-authored the study cited in this post.
Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change	2013-05-29	Barnes, J., Dove, M., Lahsen, M., Mathews, A., McElwee, P., McIntosh, R., Moore, F., O'Reilly, J., Orlove, B., Puri, R., Weiss, H., Yager K. Nature Climate Change 3, 541–544 (2013)	Publications
Correcting expected utility for comparisons between alternative outcomes: A unified parameterization of regret and disappointment.	2008-01-05	Laciana, C.E., & Weber, E.U. \| Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 36, 1-17	Publications	Abstract: A unified parameterization of an expected utility model corrected for regret and disappointment effects is presented, constrained to conform to a wellknown choice pattern, the common consequence effect, a special case of the Allais paradox. For choices subject to regret and disappointment effects to be consistent with this choice pattern, the function that corrects the utility of the obtained outcome has to have a positive second derivative for its regret component and a negative second derivative for its disappointment component. These hypothesized functional forms make predictions about the relative effect that small vs. large differences between obtained and alternative outcomes should have on people’s experiences of regret or disappointment. 10.1007/s11166-007-9027-4
CRED Co-Director Ben Orlove Interviewed on Connection Between Extreme Weather and Global Warming	2012-05-15	State of the Planet	CRED in the News
CRED Co-Director Elke Weber and CRED PI Howard Kunreuther selected as authors of IPCC 5th Assessment Report	2010-06-23	Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)	CRED in the News	CRED Co-Director Elke Weber, selected from a pool of over 3,000 nominations, is a Lead Author to the 5th Assessment Report (AR5), Working Group III, for the volume entitled, Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Weber is Lead Author of the second chapter in that volume entitled Integrated Risk and Uncertainty Assessment of Climate Change Response Policies and will focus on framing issues. CRED PI Howard Kunreuther was selected as Coordinating Lead Author for the same chapter.The scheduled completion dates for AR5 are as follows: Working Group 1- September 2013, Working Group 2- March 2014, Working Group 3- April 2014, Synthesis Report- September 2014. Other Columbia scientists and professors selected to contribute to this report include Geoffrey Heal (Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility, Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School); Marc Levy (Deputy Director CIESEN, Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs); Patrick Kinney (Associate Professor of Environmental Health Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health); Drew Shindell (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Lecturer in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences). To learn more about the AR5, click here. To learn more about the IPCC click here.
CRED Co-Director Kenny Broad Chosen as one of National Geographic's Emerging Explorers of the Year	2006-02-23	National Geographic	CRED in the News
CRED LAB MEETING \| 03 Nov. 2015	2015-11-03	Dr. Paul Bain \| Can the “co-benefits” of addressing climate change motivate people to act? Findings from a 24-nation study	2015 CRED Labs	Abstract: It is traditionally thought that the public must be convinced of the reality and importance of anthropogenic climate change in order to take personal and political action. However, convincing the broad public involves overcoming powerful ideological obstacles, and in many places climate change is slipping in public importance. Here we examined whether beliefs about the “co-benefits” of mitigating climate change can avoid these obstacles by motivating behavior in those who accept climate change, and those who are unconvinced or unconcerned. I describe an integrative framework for assessing co-benefits, distinguishing co-benefits for living conditions (e.g., pollution, disease, economic development), and for community character (e.g., benevolence, competence). Data from all inhabited continents (24 countries; N=6196), showed that two types of co-benefits, Development (economic and scientific advancement) and Benevolence (a more moral and caring community), rivalled climate change importance in the strength of their relationships with motivations to act. These co-benefits showed effects independent of climate change importance beliefs, and showed similar effects for both climate change believers and skeptics. Communicating these co-benefits of addressing climate change can help motivate action on climate change where traditional approaches have stalled.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 05 Apr. 2016	2016-04-05	Hale Forster \| Sandbox Project	2016 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 06 Oct. 2015	2015-10-06	Raymond Crookes \| The Effects of Messaging on Sustained and Spillover Behaviors: a Field Experiment	2015 CRED Labs	Abstract: In a collaborative field experiment between Columbia University and Swarthmore College, we are planning to explore the effect of environment messaging on the students’ pro-environmental behavior. Using two types of messaging, social norms-based and affect-based, we plan to extend the messaging intervention literature in two ways. First, we plan to measure the effect of message type on degree of sustained initial behavior change. Second, we plan to measure the effect of message type on the amount of spillover into new pro-environmental behaviors. This meeting will be to introduce everyone to the previous research and to discuss the proposed study design.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 08 Mar. 2016	2016-03-08	Elke Weber & Ben Orlove \| CRED Legacy / CRED Products	2016 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 1 November 2006	2006-11-01	"Discounting of environmental outcomes"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 10-5-2012	2012-10-05	Thomas Dietz \| Recent directions in environmental social science: perspectives from sociology	2012 CRED Labs	Prior research on the description-experience gap has demonstrated that people show different preferences in risky choices involving binary outcomes when probabilities are learned through experience instead of being provided as summary descriptions. However, compared to the simple lotteries used in laboratory studies real-world decisions often involve more complex outcome distributions. We will present data from a pilot study investigating the description-experience gap in choice tasks with non-binary outcome distributions using different formats of presenting information on risk. The findings have theoretical implications regarding the cognitive processes underlying experiential choice and highlight potential applications for alternative communication formats.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 15 Dec. 2015	2015-12-15	Elke Weber & Ben Orlove \| Round table discussion on COP21	2015 CRED Labs	Round table discussion with CRED directors, Elke Weber and Ben Orlove, on their experiences and thoughts on decisions made at COP21.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 15 November 2006	2006-11-15	Schoenberg, E. \| DRMS Proposal: "Beauty is in the Eyes of the Other Beholders: Preferring the Opinion of a Group to our Own"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 16 Feb. 2016	2016-02-16	Matthew Sisco \| When do weather events cause attention to climate change?	2016 CRED Labs	Abstract: We analyzed the effects of about 7,000 weather events on attention to climate change in local areas across the United States occurring from 2011 through 2014. We measured attention as the relative increase in Twitter messages about climate change in the local area near the time of each event. Coastal floods, strong winds, extreme cold and heavy snow events all had significant effects. Droughts and wildfires were positive but not statistically significant. We find that attention was reliably higher directly after events began compared to directly before. This suggests that experience with weather events is at least partially driving the effect instead of the purely descriptive information available directly beforehand. Financial damages and fatalities associated with weather events had a positive effect on attention, although the effects were small and statistically nonsignificant. The abnormality of each weather event’s occurrence (compared to historical averages) was a stronger predictor. We found that, in line with past research, relative temperature changes caused attention to climate change, but absolute temperature was not predictive. We also report that wind speed had a similar effect compared to temperature when both were measured relatively, and that wind speed was even more predictive on its absolute scale.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 17 Nov. 2015	2015-11-17	Ben Orlove	2015 CRED Labs	Ben Orlove will discuss his planned activities at COP21 in Paris. He is on the scientific committee of a UNESCO conference "Resilience in a Time of Uncertainty: Indigenous peoples and climate change," where he will present a paper on indigenous and scientific knowledge of glacier retreat. He is attending the COP as an official observer of the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development, based in Nepal; he will be coordinating representatives from glacier countries in Asia, Europe and South America. He will also be covering the COP for his website, www.glacierhub.org.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 18 October 2006	2006-10-18	Peterson, N. \| "Insuring rain: Groundnut farmers in Malawi"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 19 Apr. 2016	2016-04-19	Elke Weber & Ben Orlove \| CRED Legacy and Products	2016 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 19 Feb. 2013	2013-02-19	Diana Reckien & Alison Schuettinger \| New York City and Climate Change - Social sensitivity of space and its (non-) reflection in policy and planning	2013 CRED Labs	Abstract: We contrast the scientific literature on social sensitivity or social vulnerability with the current discussion on adaptation planning in NYC after superstorm Sandy, the spatial distribution of vulnerable populations across the 5 boroughs and the (non-) reflection of socioeconomic factors in the multitude of NYC's planning strategies. Despite the current perception large parts of the coast, including Far Rockaway and other parts of Long Island as well as Staten Island are not particularly socially sensitive as compared with other parts of NYC. There is the risk that NYC is on a path to mal-adaptation when considering the entire urban area and other climate extremes.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 2 February 2007	2007-02-02	"Massimo's Global Warming Presentation"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 20 Oct. 2015	2015-10-20	Claudia Schneider \| How will you feel tomorrow? Thinking about positive future emotions promotes sustainable decisions today // Sudy Majd \| Query Theory As A Tool To Assist Restrained Eaters	2015 CRED Labs	Abstracts: Claudia Schneider \| How will you feel tomorrow? Thinking about positive future emotions promotes sustainable decisions today: A growing body of research points to the central role that the anticipation of future affective state plays in shaping future-oriented decision-making. We extend the literature on anticipated emotions to examine how specific affective states can be leveraged to support sustainable behaviors. Across two studies, we explored whether making positive and negative anticipated emotions (i.e., anticipated pride and guilt) salient just prior to decision-making could serve as a novel method for promoting pro-environmental action. Results revealed that targeting positive anticipated emotions (i.e., pride) is a more effective driver of sustainable behavior change compared to targeting negative anticipated emotions (i.e., guilt). Sudy Majd \| Query Theory As A Tool To Assist Restrained Eaters: Researchers have found the behavior of clinical populations to deviate from normative model predictions. Drawing on theories from decision-making and behavioral economics, we conducted a study to better understand behaviors of restrained eaters in using query theory and the endowment effect to see if they behave as theories predict. 102 participants were randomly assigned to an endowed or unendowed condition, and then asked to list their thoughts as they decided to keep or not keep products two products: a sample of shampoo and an ice cream sandwich. Participants then filled out the Revised Restraint Questionnaire, which was used to dichotomize them into restrained or unrestrained eaters. We found an effect of endowment condition on query order and content. Additionally, queries generated by restrained eaters were significantly different than controls for both food and nonfood items. These findings suggest the behavior of restrained eaters does deviate from unrestrained eaters and that restrained eaters exert self-control beyond food decisions.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 22 Mar. 2016	2016-03-22	Sudy Majd \| Update on ideas42.com	2016 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 23 Feb. 2016	2016-02-23	David Budescu \| Brief of IPCC Communications Meeting	2016 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 25 April 2007	2007-04-25	Velez, M.A. and Fonseca, M. (Columbia University)	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 25 October 2006	2006-10-25	Velez, M.A.	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Lab Meeting \| 26 Feb. 2013		Tien Ming Lee \| Global disparity in the predictors of public climate change awareness and risk perceptions	2013 CRED Labs	Climate change is one of the greatest threats facing humanity. Yet, public opinion polls suggest that levels of public awareness and risk perception vary considerably worldwide. While such global discrepancies may be tied to national development characteristics, little is known about the underlying structure of public climate change perceptions. Here, using a global survey dataset, rule-based decision trees and multivariate statistics, we explore the relative influence of socio-demographic characteristics, geography, well-being, beliefs, and opinions in predicting public climate change perceptions. At the global level, we find large geographic differences. However, at the national level, we find complex interactions and important differences in the underlying correlative structures. Specifically, education is the strongest predictor of awareness in many countries in Asia, Central and South America, and Africa, but not in Europe, North America and Australia. Knowledge of the anthropogenic cause of climate change is the strongest predictor of risk perception in nations in Europe and Latin America, whereas perception of local temperature change is the most important in Africa and Asia. Analyzing the multi-dimensional structure of significant predictors of risk perception, however, we find that nations weakly cluster by geographic region and differences between countries are only slightly explained by national economic and ecological indicators. Overall, our results reveal widespread regional inconsistency in the correlative structure of public climate change perceptions. This suggests that climate change communicators and educators must consider the national-level factors that shape public responses to climate change in each country.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 26 January 2007	2007-01-26	Krantz, D.H. (Columbia University)	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 29 June 2007	2007-06-29	Arora, P. (Columbia University) \| Presentation for Seattle conference	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 29 November 2006	2006-11-29	Grant proposal discussion: Social Goals, Framing	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 4 April 2007	2007-04-04	Murphy, R.	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 4 October 2006	2006-10-04	Review of Projects	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| 5 Feb. 2013	2013-02-05	Dave Krantz \| Biases in Personal Energy Conservation (Shahzeen Z. Attari, Elke U. Weber, and David H. Krantz)	2013 CRED Labs	Abstract Why don’t Americans conserve energy and adopt energy-efficient technologies? An obvious answer is that people do not have enough information about their choice options. An alternative explanation is that people have the information but are not sufficiently motivated to act on it. We present results from two surveys that explored the existence of information deficits and motivated cognition, with the latter inferred when people know which behaviors are effective but endorse them for others rather than for themselves. We find strong evidence for a self-other bias: participants recommend a seemingly easy but not very effective behavior for themselves (e.g., turning off lights) and a harder, more effective behavior for other Americans (e.g., carpooling). Participants adopt actions that they judge to be both effective and applicable, but judged applicability and reported adoption both fall off as a function of mean perceived difficulty of the action. These results imply that both information deficit and motivated cognition are at work: people sometimes overestimate the effectiveness of easy actions, as compared with difficult ones, and sometimes judge the difficult ones as not applicable to their lives.
CRED LAB MEETING \| 5 March 2013		Christoph Ungemach & Katherine Thompson \| Is there a description-experience gap in risky choices involving non-binary outcome distributions?	2013 CRED Labs
CRED LAB MEETING \| 8 November 2006	2006-11-08	Fonseca, M. (Columbia University) \| "Coordinating Investment Under Uncertainty: Examining Gains from an Ex-ante Queue"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 15, 2010	2010-04-15	Pogrebna, G. (Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Volkswagen Foundation) \| "The Effect of Pregnancy and Child-bearing on Attitudes Towards Risk"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 16, 2009	2009-04-16	Reid, A. (Columbia University, Honors Student) \| "Justifying Injustice: The Effects of Affiliation Manipulation on Judicial Decision Making"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 2, 2009	2009-04-02	Hardisty, D. (Columbia University, Doctoral Student) \| Informal Research Discussion	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 22, 2010	2010-04-22	Feygina, I. (Postdoctoral Student, New York University) \| "Communicating Uncertainty in Climate Change"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 23, 2009	2009-04-23	Smith, J. (Columbia University, Doctoral Student), Yoskowitz, N. (Teachers College, Doctoral Student), Reijseger, G. (University of Amsterdam, Visiting Scholar) \| "Justifying Injustice: The Effects of Affiliation Manipulation on Judicial Decision Making"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 29, 2010	2010-04-29	Por, H. (Doctoral Student, Fordham University) \| "Communicating Uncertainty in Climate Change"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 30, 2009	2009-04-30	Lothes, E. (Columbia University) \| "Understanding American Religious Environmentalism through Focus Group Analysis"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| April 8, 2010	2010-04-08	Scott, R. (Honors Undergraduate Student, Columbia University) \| "Construal Level Theory and Preventive Health Behavior" and Hall, E. (CRED Research Assistant, Columbia University) \| "Does Guilt Tripping Equal Effective Policy? Emotions and Discounting"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| August 26, 2010	2010-08-26	Scott, R. (Undergraduate Honors Student, Columbia University) \| "Construal Level Theory and Preventive Health Behavior"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| August 6, 2009	2009-08-06	Sparks, N. (Columbia University (Graduate 2009), Claremont (Doctoral Student)) \| "A Behavioral Economics Approach to Carbon Offsetting: Beyond Business as Usual"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 10, 2009	2009-12-10	Arora, P and Logg, J. (Columbia University) \| Informal Session: Energy Challenge Project	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 12, 2008	2008-12-12	Jonhson, J. (The Pacific Foundation) \| "CRED Partnership with the Pacific Foundation and Harmony Institute"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 16, 2008	2008-12-16	Schoenberg, E. (Columbia University) \| "Relative Wealth Concerns and Asset Bubbles: An Experimental Approach"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 17, 2009	2009-12-17	Gong, M. (Columbia University Postdoc) \| "30 Percent Chance More or Less Fair Than 30 Percent Pie? Fairness Under Uncertainty"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 18, 2009	2009-12-18	Attari, S. (Columbia University Postdoc) \| Informal Meeting: Debriefing Copenhagen (COP 15) and the transatlantic climate bridge	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 2, 2008	2008-12-02	Reid, A. (Columbia University) \| "Justifying Injustice: The Effects of Affiliation Manipulation on Judicial Decision Making"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 3, 2009	2009-12-03	Fishman, R. (Columbia University, SIPA, Doctoral Student) \| "Making Collective Environmental Decisions When Discount Rates are Heterogenous"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	The grasshopper and the ant sit at the negotiations table: Making collective environmental decisions when discount rates are heterogenous
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 8, 2010	2010-12-08	Thompson, K. (Doctoral Student, Columbia University) \| AGU Practice Talk	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 9, 2008		Pogrebna, G.(Columbia University) \| "Other-Regarding Preferences in Leadership Styles"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| December 9, 2010	2010-12-09	Chapman, G. (Rutgers University) \| "Using Decision Science to Promote Healthy Behavior"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 11, 2010	2010-02-11	Arora, P. (Postdoc) and Smith, J. (Columbia University, Doctoral Student) \| "Role of Status in Environmental and Moral Decisions"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 12, 2009	2009-02-12	Petersson, N. and Arora, P. (Columbia University) \| Informal Discussion: Updates on Ethiopia project and pilot studies	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 18, 2010	2010-02-18	Heal, G. (Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility at Columbia Business School) and Gong, M. (Postdoctoral Student, Columbia University) \| "Why Should You Care About the Sea Lions? Educate the Public About the Value of Biodiversity"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 19, 2009	2009-02-19	Blais, A. (Center for Interuniversity Research and Analysis on Organizations (CIRANO), Montreal, Canada) \| "Moral Principles, Intensity and Judgment: A Glimpse into the Moral and Ethical Decision Making Process"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 23, 2009	2009-02-23	Ting, H. (University of Maryland, Doctoral Student) \| "Goal-gradient Hypothesis and Escalation of Commitment: An Alternative Explanation for the Sunk Cost Fallacy"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 25, 2010	2010-02-25	Kallbekken, S. (Senior Research Fellow, CICERO) \| "How to Make People Love Environmental Taxes: Insights from Lab Experiments and Surveys"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 26, 2009	2009-02-26	Krantz, D. (Columbia University) \| "Research on Environmental Decisions: Importance of Social Goals and Participatory Processes"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| February 5, 2009		Krantz, D. (Columbia University) \| "Group (or Team) Decisions in Strategic Games"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	I review the different types of social goals and briefly mention the kinds of social roles that arise (a) in group decision making experiments and (b) in multi-player games. I then argue for the importance of combining these two types of experiments. We'll discuss in- and out-group relations in connection to such experiments
CRED LAB MEETING \| Friday, 18 March 2011	2011-03-18	Tubiana, Laurence (Director of Global Public Goods, French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs; Associate Professor and Director, Sustainable Development Center, Institute of Political Studies ) & Chabason, Lucien (Institute for Sustainable Devel	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Friday, October 12th. 2012 2-3pm	2012-10-12	A Meeting with George Marshall, Author and Climate Outreach and Information Network founder	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	George Marshall has written widely on the challenges of climate change communication, including articles for The Ecologist, New Scientist, the New Statesman, the Guardian, and Geo. Currently, he is conducting research for a book (draft titled Terra Incognita, see attached book and author notes) on climate change exploring the central theme: “why are people finding it so hard to believe in climate change?” George's visit to CRED coincides with visits to Texas to explore this question through interviews with a wide range of people (including Tea Party activists, farmers, scientists and oil company executives) about the current extreme weather, and meetings and a seminar at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, and Yale's Cultural Cognition Project. His aim is to produce an influential book that reaches a wide market with a new take on climate change. In keeping with the spirit of his book project, George has experience in many different approaches and disciplines. Building on his university background in Social Anthropology, he spent ten years working on indigenous rights campaigning and the illegal timber trade in the tropics. He works closely with academics in his field and is an affiliate fellow of the peer review college of the Natural Environment Research Council. His UK-based organization, the Climate and Outreach and Information Network, is a non-profit specializing in public engagement around climate change. He leads its Language and Discourse Programme that consolidates and shares the latest findings on climate communications research. George is interested in discussing the latest thinking in the UK on climate change communications and his organization's main programme in Wales, where, for the past 6 months, he and a team of 10 communications specialists (including leading UK consultants and academics from two universities) have been developing narratives and vocabulary around Sustainable Development for the regional government of Wales (a semi-independent region the size of Connecticut). The resulting narratives were derived from and tested within 17 focus groups derived from 6 attitudinal segments. This meeting would provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the narratives with CRED's climate communications guide.
CRED LAB MEETING \| January 23, 2009	2009-01-23	Etkin, D. (York University) \| "Climate Change Risk Perceptions"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| January 29, 2009		Hardisty, D., Lippman, J.,Thomson, K. (Columbia University) \| Informal Research Discussion: "Intertemporal Choice: Measurement and Preferences for Self vs. Others"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| July 7, 2010	2010-07-07	van Lidth de Jeude, M. (University of Amsterdam, Visiting Scholar) \| "Feedback and Energy Conservation"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Feedback, in combination with financial and/or social rewards (e.g. money and/or compliments), can have an impact on individuals energy conservation behavior. In a field study that I did in The Netherlands, I found that feedback + social rewards had a greater impact on conservation behavior than feedback + a small monetary reward. However, the participants I used, worked for a sustainable energy consultancy company, and I did not have a condition where people received feedback only (without reward). I am going to talk about a lab study that I am currently designing with Michel Handgraaf (CRED Europe) and Kirstin Appelt (CRED USA) for a different group of participants; students. This time, we will include a feedback-only condition (without rewards). We also intend to measure participant’s goal-frames. Goal-frames determine what knowledge and attitudes are most easily accessible
CRED LAB MEETING \| July 8, 2010	2010-07-08	Purdie-Vaughns, V. (Assistant Professor, Columbia University) \| "Decision Architecture and Affirmative Action"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 10, 2010	2010-06-10	Ashraf, N. (Assistant Professor, Harvard University) \| "Incentives for Conservation in Bolivia: Crowding Out or Crowding In?"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 17, 2010	2010-06-17	Appelt. K. \| "My Way: Strategic Preferences Vary by Negotiator Role and Regulatory Focus," and Arora, P. \| "Role of Status in Strategic Choices and Outcomes in Negotiations"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 18, 2009	2009-06-18	Sachdeva , S. (Northwestern University) \| "Our Moral Thermostat: How Internal Self-Regulation Affects Moral Behavior"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 23, 2009	2009-06-23	Xiao, E. (Carnegie Mellon University) \| "Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 25, 2009	2009-06-25	Reijseger, G. (University of Amsterdam (Visiting Scholar))\| "When Things Fit, People Flit: Linking Regulatory Fit and Negotiation Avoidance"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| June 4, 2009	2009-06-04	von Muehlen, S. and Wechsler, D. \| Energy Hub: Presenting their product and discussing a possible field test collaboration	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 1, 2010	2010-03-01	Tall, A. (Johns Hopkins University) \| "User-Scientist Dialogues in West Africa and Their Potential to Trigger the Establishment of People-Centered Early Warning-Early Action Systems (EWSs)"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 11, 2010	2010-03-11	Baron, J. (University of Pennsylvania) \| "Citizens' Concepts of their Duty"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 12, 2009	2009-03-12	Helga Fehr, H. (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) \| "Uncertainty Breeds Decreasing Impatience: The Role of Risk Preferences in Time Discounting"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 18, 2008	2008-03-18	Heal, G. (Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility, Columbia Business School) \| Workshop on Discounting: "Measuring discount rates and introduction to the range of economic and psychological approaches”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 25, 2010	2010-03-25	Ekstrom, G. (Columbia University) \| "Natural Disasters: Hazards, Risks and Predictions"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 26, 2009	2009-03-26	Morrs, R. (National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)) \| "How Do Members of the Public Interpret and Use Weather Forecast Uncertainty Information?"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 4, 2009	2009-03-04	Poonam Arora, P. (Columbia University) \| "Past Experiences Impacts Future Coordination: The Minimal Status Effect" (Talk based on a working paper)	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Past research on social status links it to power or the control over another's resources and outcome. In 5 studies we examine the development and impact of social status when it is decoupled from power on choices made in mixed motive decisions.
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 4, 2010	2010-03-04	Arora, P. (Postdoctoral Scholar) and Goodrich, C. (DEES, Columbia University) \| "Minimal Status Effect - Part II"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| March 5, 2009	2009-03-05	Gong, M. (University of Pennsylvania) \| "Group Cooperation Under Uncertainty"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| May 13, 2010	2010-05-13	Shi, A. (CRED Undergraduate Research Assistant) and Gong, M. (Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University) \| "The Energy Paradox in China"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| May 14, 2009	2009-05-14	Page, L. \| (Research Fellow, Universities of Westminster and Cambridge) \| "Using Prediction Markets for Climate Change Prediction"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| May 20, 2010	2010-05-20	Budescu, D. and Anastasi, A. (Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology, Fordham University) \| "The Give-Or-Take-Some (GOTS) Social Dilemma"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Monday, 21 March 2011	2011-03-21	Ungemach, Christoph (University of Warwich) \| "Decision Architecture"	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Monday, 4 April 2011	2011-04-04	Gong, Min (Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University) \| “Uncertainty, Opportunity and Discounting in a Quickly Changing Society- Culture Differences between Chinese and Americans on Discounting”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Monday, October 22nd, 2012, 11am-12pm	2012-10-22	Charles Donovan \| Research presentation: Environmental investments in India	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract The cost of capital is a cornerstone of corporate investment analysis. Unfortunately, what business schools have taught managers about the cost of capital is a fantasy. In this presentation, we explore the flaws of modern financial theory in relation to investments in the real economy and examine their implications for government policy making. Taking a specific focus on clean technology investments in emerging markets, we highlight the dangers of using the “Goldilocks story” of risk and return as the basis for multi-billion dollar subsidies. About the Speaker Charles Donovan is a Visiting Professor in the Department of Finance at EADA Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was most recently Head of Structuring and Valuation for Alternative Energy at BP plc, responsible for risk analysis and project financing of large renewable energy projects in North America, Europe and Asia. Charles began his career as an Energy Policy Analyst with the US Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration and subsequently worked for the Enron Corporation in structured finance. His experience includes several years in private sector consulting, advising national governments and multinational energy companies on the impacts of climate policy on investment. Charles holds a bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of Washington, a MBA from Vanderbilt University, and a DBA from IE Business School. His research interests include asset pricing, capital structure, and corporate strategy in global clean technology industries. Charles is a Trustee of the Active Earth Foundation, a UK-based charity supporting nature-based learning programs for high school and university students.
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 10, 2010	2010-11-10	Tubiana, L. (Director of Global Public Goods, French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs; Associate Professor and Director, Sustainable Development Center, Institute of Political Studies) \| "Understanding the Drivers of Climate Change Negotiations"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 11, 2008		Handgraaf, M. (University of Amsterdam) \| "Environmental Decision Making by Individuals and Groups: a progress report"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 11, 2010	2010-11-11	Zaidan, G. (Founder, Free Energy Productions; Writer and Producer, Ignite Productions; Fellow, Institute for Education) \| "Science Communication in the Internet Age"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	How do you translate a journal article from Geekspeak into English? How do you talk to journalists? How do you increase the visibility of your lab? Science communication has been around a long time, but the advent of digital media and the Internet has unleashed a host of new tools to put science in front of non-scientists and help them care about it. In this talk, I’ll explain how to use the tried-and-true techniques of science communication in the ever changing landscape of new media: all for the benefit of your lab.
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 13, 2009	2009-11-13	Appelt, K. (Postdoc), and Hardisty, D. (Doctoral Student, Columbia University) \| JDM Practice Talks, and Gong, M. (Postdoc, Columbia University) \| "The Endowment Effect Under Uncertainty"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 18, 2008	2008-11-18	Arora, P. \| Informal SJDM Review, "How Long Does a Label Last: Impact of Past Acts on Present Decisions"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Preliminary results from 4 studies that examine the influence exerted by social labels on economic tradeoffs in mixed motive decisions.
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 18, 2010	2010-11-18	Informal meeting \| JDM Practice Talks	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 19, 2008	2008-11-19	Hardisty, F. (Pennsylvania State University) \| "Graphic Visualization and Analysis"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 19, 2009	2009-11-19	Handgraaf, M. (University of Amsterdam) \| "Private Payment Versus Public Praise: Effects of Reward Type on Energy Conservation" and Arora, P. (Columbia University Postdoc) \| JDM Practice Talk"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 25, 2008	2008-11-25	Robison, B. (Columbia University) \| Fractor	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 5, 2009	2009-11-05	Milch, K. (Doctoral Student, Columbia University) \| "Investing In and For Oneself: How Feeling Close to One's Future Self Impacts Intertemporal Resources Allocation"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| November 7, 2008	2008-11-07	SJDM Practice Talks: Hardisty, D. "A Dirty Word or a Dirty World? Attribute Framing, Politics, and Query Theory" and Krosch, A. \| "Predicting choice and conflict in morally challenging decisions: The role of option characteristics and competing decision	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 1, 2009	2009-10-01	Sanquist, T. and Shui, B. (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory) \| "Human Behavior and Energy Use: Modeling the Relationships"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 12, 2010	2010-10-12	Arvai, J. (Michigan State University) \| "Structured Decision Making in Developing Countries: Field Studies in Costa Rica and Tanzania"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 14, 2008	2008-10-14	Sonja Klinsky, S. (Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability, University of British Columbia) \| "Across Years, Lands and Oceans: Justice and Scale in Climate Change Policy Decision Making"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 21, 2008	2008-10-21	Bruine de Bruin, W. (Carnegie Mellon University) \| "Measuring inflation expectations: The impact of survey design on the interpretability of data"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	In this talk, I will present data from qualitative interviews and quantitative follow-up surveys to examine how members of the general public interpret the questions on the Michigan Survey of Consumers, as well as alternative questions about inflation expectations. Among other things, the data suggest that people vary in their interpretation of questions about inflation expectations, and that these interpretations are associated with differences in reported expectations. The results have implications for the design of survey questions on inflation expectations and other complex economic topics.
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 21, 2010	2010-10-21	Krantz, D. (CRED Co-Director) \| "Problems of Social and Temporal Scale in Risk Sharing"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 22, 2009	2009-10-22	Logg, J. (Postbacc Student, Columbia University) \| Informal Session: "Intergenerational Decisions and Altruism on the College Campus"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 28, 2008	2008-10-28	Small, A. (Department of Meterology, Pennsylvania State University) \| "The Value of Information Map; A Tool for Integrating Statistical and Economic Metrics of Forecast Quality"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	People use forecasts to help them make decisions. But what does it mean to say that a forecasting system is "good", or that one forecasting system is "better" than another? System developers typically measure their progress in terms of "generic" statistical indices: they may note, say, a decline over successive model generations in the observed root mean square error of some benchmark predictand. Yet summary statistical measures of error are often related only loosely to the concerns of forecast users. For consumers, the quality of a forecasting system is quantified naturally in terms of the expected value of forecast information, in the context of some particular decision problem. In settings where neither side has access to the specialized knowledge and language of the other, it is often difficult and expensive for producers and consumers of forecasts to collaborate."
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 28, 2009	2009-10-28	Logg, J. (Postbacc Student, Columbia University) \| "Intergenerational Decisions and Altruism on the College Campus"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 29, 2009	2009-10-29	Thompson, K. (Doctoral Student, Columbia University) \| "Measuring Environmental Discount Rates Over Long Timescales"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 6, 2010	2010-10-06	Goddard, L. (International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI)) \| "Decadal Climate Prediction EXPERIMENTS: How Best to Understand and Communicate What These Can and Cannot Tell Us"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 7, 2008	2008-10-07	Markiewicz, L. \| "Analysis of decisions taken by participants of the investment game - susceptibility of virtual investors investing virtual money" (Followed by an informal discussion with Nicole Yoskowitz and Julie Smith)	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 8, 2009	2009-10-08	Gong, M. (Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University) \| Informal session on two working projects	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| October 8, 2009	2009-10-08	Attari, S. (Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University) \| "Human Behavior and Climate Change: Preferences for Change and Perceptions of Energy Consumption"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 10, 2009	2009-09-10	Appelt, K. (Columbia University) \| NSF Workshop Report	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 16, 2010	2010-09-16	Krantz, D. (CRED Co-Director) and Gong, M. (Postdoctoral Student, Columbia University) \| "Facilitating Pareto-Optimum Coordination by Subsidies in Deterministic and Risky Settings"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Can subsidies promote Pareto-optimum coordination? We found that partially subsidizing 2 out of 6 players in a laboratory coordination game usually produced better coordination and higher total payoff, with deterministic and also with stochastic payoffs. After removal of the subsidy, high coordination continued in most groups with stochastic payoffs but declined with deterministic ones. A post-game survey indicated that decision justifications differ between deterministic and risky settings. Temporary subsidies may promote lasting coordination in risk reduction, whereas in a deterministic setting, subsidy may be counterproductive, because it crowds out other bases for coordination.
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 17, 2009	2009-09-17	Pogrebna, G. (Postdoctoral Research Scientist, Volkswagen Foundation) \| "Decision Making Under Ambiguity"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 23, 2008	2008-09-23	Milch, K. (Columbia University) \| "Perceived Closeness to Future Selves and Intertemporal Allocation Decisions"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	How does thinking about one's future self (the person one expects to become in x years) impact the way people make intertemporal tradeoffs? I propose that many intertemporal choices are analogous to playing a dictator game with oneself (i.e., one's future self), and that subjective closeness to one's future self affects how these choices are made. In two studies I show that social distance to one's future self is malleable and independent of attitude towards future self. I will present evidence that closeness to future self predicts intertemporal allocation decisions, although the way in which closeness relates to choice varies depending on the valence and construal of the good being allocated. I will also present some data showing differences between the way people discount future outcomes in the present and the way they discount future outcomes when they take the perspect.
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 23, 2010	2010-09-23	Baum, S. (Visiting Scholar, Geography Doctoral Student, Pennsylvania State University) \| "Space-time Discounting for Climate Change Policy"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Discounting is traditionally conceptualized as the comparison of the value of gains or losses that occur at different times. This traditional discounting figures prominently in many societal issues, especially climate change and other long-term environmental issues. However, the traditional discounting neglects the important role of space in value comparisons. In this talk, I present an overview of my ongoing research on space-time discounting. This research includes (1) ethical theory developing the concept of space-time discounting; (2) survey research exploring how people discount across space and time; and (3) applications to climate change policy. The talk will feature work at various stages from already published to preliminary plans so as to brief CRED on the space-time discounting project and begin identifying opportunities for productive collaboration.
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 24, 2009	2009-09-24	Krantz, D. (Columbia University) \| "Understanding, Communicating, and Probability"	2009 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 30, 2008	2008-09-30	Informal Project Discussions: McNeill, I. \| "Decision making in a two stage model: A brief overview" and Iwaki, Y. \|"An Exploration of Cross-National Differences in Climate Risk Perception"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 30, 2010	2010-09-30	Schoenberg, E. and Hardisty, D. \| "Focal Points and Asymmetric Payoffs"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 9, 2008	2008-09-09	Pogrebna, G. (Columbia University) \| "Leadership in Social Dilemma Situations"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	This paper explores the effect of pre-game communication in social dilemma situations on the example of an iterated voluntary contribution game. We show that pre-game communication increases the level of individual contributions in the game. Moreover, pre-game communication has essentially the same impact on the level of individual contributions as leading by example. We also find that the content of the pre-game communication has a higher impact on individual decisions than the ex post contribution of the leader. Nevertheless, participants tend to decrease their contributions if they have received a false message from the leader in the previous period.
CRED LAB MEETING \| September 9, 2010	2010-09-09	Hall, E. (Columbia University) \| "Discounting Climate Change and Open Research for 'Big Social Science' and Developing Effective Approaches to Policy"	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 1 December 2011	2011-12-01	Vargas Hill, R. \| “What Do You Need? The Value of Insurance for Farmers in Rural Bangladesh”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 1 March 2012, 2:30-3:30pm	2012-03-01	Ungemach, Christophe \| "Redundancy in Choice Architecture: Preliminary results from experiments on Fuel Economy Labels"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released new fuel economy labels which will be mandatory starting with model year 2013, arriving in showrooms this year. The labels are designed to provide people with more information on vehicles’ fuel economy, energy use and fuel costs. Using data from a Web-based experiment and Thinking-Aloud experiments conducted in the lab, we show a range of behavioral measures and process data describing the strategies people employ when using the label information in the context of different scenarios. The results suggest that when provided with sufficient information and tutorials people are able to make use of the label information. Preliminary analyses also indicate that the presentation of redundant information on fuel economy labels might increase the weight assigned to fuel economy information.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 10 February 2011	2011-02-10	Willis, D. \| “The Impact of Expert Confidence on Malaria Policy Decision Making and Learning”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 10 March 2011	2011-03-10	Thompson, Katherine (Doctoral Student, Columbia University) \| “Expanding the Virtual Disaster Lab: From Hurricanes to Debris Flows”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 10 May 2012, 2:30-4:00pm		Michl, Theresa (Ludwig Maximilan University, Germany) \| Moods and overconfidence	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Theresa Michl is a CRED visiting scholar from the Institute for Information, Organization and Management, Munich School of Management, Ludwig Maximilan University, Germany. ABSTRACT: Moods can be potential transient cause of overconfidence. To find out if and how moods influence overconfidence, we conducted an economic experiment and will conduct a neuroeconomic experiment this fall. In an incentive compatible decision experiment, we studied joy's effect on absolute and relative overconfidence. We report two main results. First, joy increases the tendency to be overconfident. Second, making an irrelevant cause of joy salient to people (i.e. by showing them a humorous movie clip) leads to well-calibrated judgments. Our results are consistent with the affect-as-information hypothesis, which suggests that affective states with a non-salient and irrelevant cause have an informative function that can lead to biased judgments. However, if the cause of the affective state is salient and obviously irrelevant (i.e. a humorous movie), the informative function is deactivated, leading to better judgments and decisions. In the neuroeconomic experiment, we seek to test the affect-as-information hypothesis on a neural basis. In particular, we will investigate the influence of joy and fear on absolute overconfidence in the general knowledge domain. The economic experiment was translated into an fMRI compatible experiment and assumes two effects that are in line with the affect-as-information hypothesis: First, we suppose that the association between activation in the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and activation in the medial prefrontal cortex is mediated by activation in the nucleus accumbens. This reflects the notion that (unconscious) moods lead to mood-congruent judgments, i.e. joy leads to overconfidence, fear leads to underconfidence. Second, we assume that the association between activation in the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and activation in the orbitofrontal cortex is mediated by activation in the supracallosal sector of the anterior cingulate. This assumption reflects the notion that people make better calibrated confidence judgments when they are aware of (the irrelevant cause of) their moods.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 13 October 2011	2011-10-13	Norton, M. \| “Experimental Games in the HARITA Project in Ethiopia”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 14 April 2011	2011-04-14	Arora, Poonam (Assistant Director, Manhattan College) \| “Over-compensate for You or Disengage from You: Group Identity and Dissonance Interact to Determine Choices in Social Dilemmas”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 14 July 2011	2011-07-14	Gaurav, S. (Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research) \| “Marketing Complex Financial Products in Emerging Markets: Evidence from Rainfall Insurance in India”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 15 December 2011	2011-12-15	Hostetler, K \| “Transitioning to Sustainability: Identifying Entry Point Behaviors”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 16 August 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-08-16	Reckien, Diana; Lüdeke, Matthias; Kit, Oleksandr; Meyer-Ohlendorf, Lutz \| Climate change research in India - New achievements of the Indo-German research project on Sustainable Hyderabad	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	DIANA RECKIEN: Subjective realities of weather extremes on daily life in urban India – A study on the quantification of impacts and adaptation options in Hyderabad and Delhi. Abstract: This presentation gives an overview of perceived impacts of strong rain events and heat waves in Hyderabad and Delhi, India. It examines the strength and diversity of impacts across social groups and urban location and reveals the socially most sensitive and sensible adaptation options. Using network statistics and scenario analysis with Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping the investigation provides quantitative and qualitative measures to compare impacts and adaptation strategies across the urban space and different social groups. Impacts of rain events are stronger than those of heat in both cities and affect the lower income classes particularly, so adaptation options should be targeted accordingly. Interestingly, the method allows to detect most meaningful adaptation options (those nodes with the largest ameliorating effect on other nodes in the network), which are not always the most burdensome impacts. The method therefore helps identifying priority adaptation options when resources are scarce. Paper for distribution: Reckien, D., Wildenberg, M., Bachhofer, M. (2012): Subjective realities of climate change: how mental maps of impacts deliver socially sensible adaptation options. Sustain Sci, DOI 10.1007/s11625-012-0179-z. About the speaker: Dr. rer. nat. Diana Reckien is a research scholar at the Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Earth Institute, Columbia University, USA. She has worked at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research from 2000 to the beginning of 2012, where she then co-led the Sustainable Hyderabad project. Her current research focuses on climate and weather impacts and adaptation options in urban areas of Europe, India and the US. She holds a degree in Geography and specializes on the interface of climate change and urbanity. She is reviewer for international journals, such as Climatic Change and Cities, guest editor of a special issue in Gaming & Simulation on "Climate Change and Gaming & Simulation", and consultant for international as well as German organizations, most recently for the Asian Development Bank. ---------------------------------------------------- MATTHIAS LÜDEKE: Potential climate change impacts in Hyderabad (India) Abstract: The presentation presents the results of evaluation of 22 global AOGCMs, downscaled to the region of Hyderabad (India). The models consistently predict an increase in average rainfall intensity and an increase in frequency of heat waves in the city. A model of pluvial flood risk is being developed, which aims to identify parts of the city which are particularly endangered by extreme weather events of the future, and to integrate climate change aspects into the urban planning process. Paper for distribution: Lüdeke, MKB; Budde, M; Kit, O; Reckien, D (2010). Climate Change projections and their uncertainty for Hyderabad: Final results. Report, September 2010. About the speaker: Dr. phil. nat. Matthias K. B. Lüdeke is a senior scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Within the 'Climate Impacts and Vulnerability' research domain he focuses on climate change impacts on urban functions and global patterns of climate change vulnerability. Originally educated as a theoretical physicist, he has wide expertise in mathematical modeling approaches for socio-ecological systems. He is also lecturer for Environmental Sciences at the University of Potsdam, lead author of UNEP's Global Environmental Outlook, reviewer for Global Environmental Change, Environmental Modeling and Assessment, EU's Research Directorate-General, and the Swiss National Research Foundation and the German Federal Environmental Agency. ---------------------------------------------------- OLEKSANDR KIT: Identification of urban slums using automated QuickBird imagery analysis. Abstract: The presentation lays down an approach to automated identification of slums in Hyderabad (India) and discusses its advantages and limitations. The method is based on the assumption that the spatial structure of slums can be represented by a specific range of lacunarity - measure of spatial heterogeneity of urban fabric, as seen by high resolution satellite sensors. The resulting slum location map can be used in the climate change vulnerability assessment process and is a part of the WebGIS-based decision support system CATHY (Climate Assessment Tool for Hyderabad). Paper for distribution: Kit O, Lüdeke MKB, Reckien D (2011): Texture-based identification of urban slums in Hyderabad, India using remote sensing data. Applied Geography 32 (2): 660-667. About the speaker: Oleksandr Kit holds a Master's degree in Geography from the University of Lviv (Ukraine), and an EU Joint Master's degree in Water and Coastal Management. His studies were to a large extent devoted to GIS, Remote Sensing and decision support technologies. After completing his studies in 2007, Oleksandr was employed as a Research Scientist at the University of Southampton (UK), developing coastal and marine WebGIS applications and decision support systems. In 2009 he also joined Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and started to work on a PhD project. His dissertation deals with identification of vulnerabilities to extreme weather events in the urban setting of Hyderabad (India), as well as with development of the Climate Assessment Tool for Hyderabad. ---------------------------------------------------- LUTZ MEYER-OHLENDORF: Perceptions on Causes for Climate Change. A Case Study from Hyderabad/India. Abstract: While climate change is a complex and scientifically mediated phenomenon that is translated and communicated to the public through mass media, weather pattern changes are rather perceived and discussed in everyday life situations. Based on our research in the emerging megacity of Hyderabad in India, we show how these issues are represented by a small (n=26) sample of inhabitants from various social and cultural backgrounds. Using a process that results in mental maps, our interviews reveal 3 types or models of social representation of weather pattern changes and climate change. Most respondents frame the topic rather scientifically (pollution and modernized pollution models). A few respondents however, connect changes with religion and (im)moral behavior of human beings. We discuss the implications of these models and what they can teach modern scientific worldviews. Paper for distribution: Meyer-Ohlendorf, L., Reusswig, F., Eichenauer, E. (upcoming): Perceptions of Climate Change and the Role of Religion. A Case Study from Hyderabad/India. In: Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture. About the speaker: Lutz is a PhD student at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) within the BMBF funded project ‘Sustainable Hyderabad’. During his Master’s in Social Geography, Cultural Anthropology and Indology at Cologne University he focused his studies on developing countries' urban areas in general and Megacities in particular. For his master’s thesis he conducted a six months field work in three Delhi slums and investigated the political dimension of informal water supply. After finishing his Masters he worked for the German Development Institute (DIE) on a study on adaptation to climate change in (Mega-) Cities of Sub-Saharan Africa. For his PhD thesis he is developing a lifestyle typology of private households in order to understand and explain lifestyle specific environmental consciousness and consumption behavior and to reveal different levels of lifestyle-induced GHG emissions (personal carbon footprints).
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 16 February 2012, 2:30-3:30pm	2012-02-16	Gong, Min and Sisco, Matt \| "Are environmental and non-environmental commodities valued like salsa and chips, or like chips and chips?"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract: While it is rather clear that achieving a sustainable economy is essential to our global future, it is much less clear how a sustainable economy might actually function. We will be presenting a new research project investigating the fundamental economic relationships between environmental and non-environmental commodities. If the price of tortilla chips drops, the demand for potato chips will probably drop, and the demand for salsa will probably increase. Is the relationship between environmental and non-environmental commodities more like salsa and tortilla chips (complements), or like potato chips and tortilla chips (substitutes)? Previous research has reported mixed results, which are mostly non-conclusive and not generalizable. We will present our current research design and tentative methodologies, with hopes for an interactive discussion.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 17 February 2011	2011-02-17	Cornwell, J. \| “Motivating Generosity”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 17 May 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-05-17	Howe, Peter. D \| "Perceptions of local temperature change: cross-national survey evidence"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract This research explores how experience with local weather influences individual perceptions about long-term climate change. Human perceptions are a key determinant of vulnerability and resilience to natural hazards, but climate change has been considered a hazard that is difficult to perceive directly because its impacts are spatially and temporally heterogeneous. This research provides evidence from an analysis of global survey data that supports a link between local climate change experience and individual perceptions, using data created via a novel spatial modeling methodology to quantify how populations experience climate variability and change. Results show that perceptions correspond with quantified patterns of temperature change from gridded climate station data weighted to account for the spatial distribution of population. Perceptions are also biased by the local season, with respondents more likely to perceive rising local temperatures when asked during the warm season. Despite this bias, results indicate that individuals who live in places experiencing recent rising temperatures are more likely than others to perceive local warming. These findings suggest that changes in weather patterns may shift public opinion regarding the personal experience of climate change. About the Speaker Peter D. Howe is a doctoral candidate in Geography at Penn State University. His research focuses on the interface of human perception and behavior with vulnerability to climate change and natural hazards. He is also interested in integrating geospatial analytic methods into research on environmental perception and behavior. His doctoral research examines the role of personal climate change experience in perceptions and beliefs about global warming. Peter holds an MS in Geography from Penn State, and a BA in Political Science and BS in Geography from Arizona State University. He will be starting as a postdoctoral associate at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication in September, 2012.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 17 November 2011	2011-11-17	Petrovic, N. \| “Integrating Physical Wildfire Models with Decision Making for Response”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 19 April 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-04-19	Thompson, Katherine \| “The Psychology of Disaster: Why We Under-Prepare for Floods and Hurricanes in the Hudson Valley”	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Natural disasters are always a threat, but we presently face the prospect of natural disasters becoming more destructive as human-caused climate change kicks into high gear. As a large urban population at the edge of the sea, with a fragile waterway in our midst, how can we prepare for future hurricanes and floods? And the biggest question of all: how much can society—and human beings themselves—change when faced with a looming but distant threat?
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 20 January 2011	2011-01-20	Carr, M.E. (Associate Director, Columbia Climate Center; CRED Executive Committee, ex officio) \| “Climate Information and Misinformation: Getting the Message Out”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	While it is commonly accepted that improved science comprehension is a key element to informed decisions on the many societal issues that interface with science and technology, it is not always clear what that understanding should entail. Is it knowledge of a set of facts and their context, the ability to read scientific papers, familiarity with data sets and their strengths and limitations, the development of original research? Physical scientists continue to operate assuming the deficit model: that lack of societal engagement results from ignorance or lack of information. Yet, in the case of climate, an active community of citizen scientists is engaged in a parallel research activity that aims to audit the basic tenets of the field, thus illustrating that greater literacy does not necessarily lead to consensus.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 20 October 2011	2011-10-20	Konnikova, M & Madrigano, J.	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 21 April 2011	2011-04-21	Keenan, Elizabeth (Visiting Scholar from the Rady School of Management at UCSD) \| “Too Much of a Good Thing: Unsustainable Consumption of Green Products”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 22 March 2012, 2:30-3:30	2012-03-22	Lee, Tien Ming (Columbia University) \| "Surveying the conservation science research landscape in the last two decades"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Conservation biology is a crisis discipline developed to reduce the loss of the natural landscape and biodiversity. To meet conservation targets more effectively, it is crucial to track research trends to ensure that gaps between conservation priorities and primary research are narrowed. Here, we do this by tracking changes in research publication trends from four specialized conservation journals (> 14,000 papers) over the last two decades. First, we subjectively classify papers into seventeen major conservation research sub-themes to identify broad-scale changes in research foci. Second, we investigate changes in keywords occurrences and their co-occurrences with other keywords in papers. We find strong year-to-year variations in the numbers of publications in Conservation Biology (> 4,000 papers from 1987 to 2010). While ‘climate change’ research is increasing with time, ‘science and policy’ papers, integral for effective conservation, are still under-represented. Notably, our analysis reveals a possible ‘boom-and-bust’ pattern for ‘habitat fragmentation’ over a span of 15 years (1995-2010). This suggests that strong research attention may be sustained for only a limited period and hence has implications for the design and duration of conservation funding programs. Our keyword network analysis uncovers shifts in individual keywords and their co-occurrences over time. For select keywords, we find significant temporal changes, implying that keywords occurrences fluctuate with time and may be influenced by key initiatives (e.g., IPCC). We also show that the correspondence of the conservation keywords between conservation and a subset of non-conservation journals are relatively weak, suggesting the limited uptake of conservation science research outside of the specialized conservation literature. Our approach can be easily adopted for other disciplines (including interdisciplinary research) where the rapid broad-scale monitoring of research fronts is particularly useful in responding to societal needs more effectively.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 22 September 2011	2011-09-22	Gong, M., Krantz, D.H. & Weber, E.U. \| “Differences in Temporal Discounting of Future Gains but not Losses Between Chinese and Americans”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 23 May 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-05-23	Greenspan Bell, Ruth \| NUSSRoSE Overview	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Ruth will give a brief introduction of her background and talk about how NUSSRoSE came about, what it hopes to accomplish, and steps underway towards accomplishments. In turn, we would like to give Ruth the flavor of CRED's work.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 24 March 2011	2011-03-24	Strauss, B. (Executive Director, Climate Central?) \| “Communications Strategies Around Sea Level Rise and a Next-Generation Map”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 26 April 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-04-26	Azevedo, Inez Lima (Center for Climate and Energy Decision-Making and Carnegie Mellon University) \| "Research on energy efficient lighting: understanding the engineer-economics aspects, consumer perceptions of light and color and consumer decision-making	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Inez Lima Azevedo is Executive Director-Center for Climate and Energy Decision-Making (DMUU), and Assistant Research Professor-Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Part I: An overview of the Center for Climate and Energy Decision-Making (funded under an agreement between Carnegie Mellon University and the National Science Foundations under DMUU Solicitation NSF 09-554). Part II: Research on energy efficient lighting: understanding the engineer-economics aspects, consumer perceptions of light and color and consumer decision-making models. ABSTRACT: In the second topic, we will describe three recent pieces of analysis on adoption of energy efficient lighting technologies. 1) Lighting constitutes more than 20% of total U.S. electricity consumption. Because many current lighting technologies are highly inefficient, improved technologies for lighting hold great potential for energy savings and for reducing associated greenhouse gas emissions. Light emitting diodes (LEDs) show great promise as a source of efficient, affordable, color-balanced white light. We start by estimating the annualized costs of lighting technologies, showing that white LEDs will be lower than that of the most efficient fluorescent bulbs by the end of this decade. We compare the electricity consumption, carbon emissions, and cost-effectiveness of current lighting technologies, accounting for expected performance evolution through 2015. We then simulate the lighting electricity consumption and implicit greenhouse gases emissions for the U.S. residential and commercial sectors through 2015 under different policy scenarios: voluntary solid-state lighting adoption, implementation of lighting standards in new construction, and rebate programs or equivalent subsidies. We also provide a measure of cost-effectiveness for solid- state lighting in the context of other climate change abatement policies. 2) Consumers’ adoption of energy-efficient lighting alternatives has been relatively slow, highlighting the need to better understand consumers’ preferences for lighting conditions including brightness and color. Using a consumer research laboratory, we exposed one hundred participants to six lighting conditions, examining their preferences and their perceptions of lighting attributes. All participants read a newspaper under each lighting condition. Overall, lighting conditions that were perceived as more bright and cooler were rated as more pleasant. These findings suggest that lighting engineers and policy makers should consider consumers’ perceptions in addition to the technical attributes when designing communications and energy efficiency-related performance standards. 3) To quantify the influence of factors that drive consumer choices for light bulbs, we conducted a choice-based conjoint field experiment with 183 participants and estimated several discrete choice models from the data. We find that environmentally minded consumers have a stronger preference for compact fluorescent lighting technology, all else being equal, while politically liberal consumers have a stronger preference for low energy consumption. Perceived personal experiences of health issues, previous use or purchase of CFLs, awareness on climate change, income, and education levels were not significant in explaining choices. Greater willingness to pay for lower energy consumption and longer life was observed in conditions where estimated operating cost information was provided. Providing estimated annual cost information to consumers reduces their implicit discount rate by a factor of five, lowering barriers to adoption of energy efficient alternatives with higher up-front costs; however, even with cost information provided, consumers continue to use implicit discount rates in excess of 90%, which is greater than that experienced in most other areas of consumer choices for energy technologies. REFERENCES: 1. Azevedo, I. L., Morgan, M. G., Morgan, F., 2009. The transition to solid state lighting. The Proceedings of the IEEE, Vol. 97, Issue 3, pp. 481-510.?March 2009. ISSN: 0018-9219. 2.Tan H., Azevedo, I.L., Bruine de Bruins, W., Lave, L. (working paper). Lighting perceptions and preferences for household energy-efficient lighting technologies 3. Min, J., Azevedo, I.L., Michalek, J., Bruine de Bruin, W. (working paper). Analyzing consumer preferences for lighting technologies using discrete choice analysis. For more information on the speaker, go to the speaker's faculty page For more information, go to CEDM's website.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 27 January 2011	2011-01-27	Krajick, K. & Funkhouser, D. \| Workshop on interviewing with the media	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 27 October 2011	2011-10-27	Treuer, G. \| “Policy Making from an Analysis of Public Reaction to the NYC Smoking Ban” and Arora, P \| “Role of Identity in Over Compensation”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 29 March 2012, 2:30-4:00	2012-03-29	Apicella, Coren (Harvard University) \| "Economic risk-taking, testosterone and sex differences"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Coren Apicella holds a PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University and an MS in Evolutionary Psychology from the University of Liverpool. She studies hunter-gatherers and Westerners to explore the proximate and ultimate origins of human behavior. Coren's work specializes in mate selection and attraction, behavioral endocrinology, behavior genetics, sex differences, behavioral economics, evolutionary psychology and social networks and the evolution of cooperation. Her research has been featured in media outlets worldwide, including BBC, ABC's Nightline and New York Times. Currently, Coren is working as a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard's Department Health Care Policy under the direction of Nicholas Christakis. Coren is also speaking at the Psychology Department's March 28th, 2012 Colloquium on "What hunter-gatherers tell us about the origins of attractiveness, social and economic preferences." For more of Dr. Apicella's work, go to http://www.corenapicella.com.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 3 February 2011	2011-02-03	Bell, A. (EI Postdoctoral Fellow) \| “Project Prospectus: Mapping Climate Information Demand in Vietnam”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 3 March 2011	2011-03-03	Strauss, B. (Executive Director, Climate Central) \| “Communications Strategies Around Sea Level Rise and a Next-Generation Map”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 31 March 2011	2011-03-31	Klinsky, Sonja (Postdoctoral Fellow, Cambridge University) \| “Vinaigrette or Oil and Vinegar? Comparing Public Rationales for Justice in Mitigation and Adaptation Climate Policy Dilemmas”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 31 May 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-05-31	Wejs, Anja \| Integrating Climate Change into Local Authorities - a Danish Case of Legitimacy Building	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract Local authorities in many countries take the lead in acting to prevent and prepare for climate change by voluntarily conducting climate change plans. These plans often cover a broad span of professional disciplines distributed among organizational departments and sub-departments demanding a need for cross-sectorial coordination of climate change actions. Furthermore, the scope of the climate change plans often goes beyond traditional plans and includes citizens’ behavioral change and partnerships with external bodies. Previous research has shown that the cross-sectorial governance of climate change stresses institutional norms and cultures at various levels and creates inertia when it comes to implementation. This research deals in depth with a single case study of a Danish Municipality to understand the institutional mechanisms that arise when an interdisciplinary and new field is to be integrated into a bureaucratic organization, and it highlights how legitimacy is built for climate change action to be carried out in practice. The study takes its point of departure in two cross-sectoral plan types, the current municipal spatial plan and the three climate action plans to date. The research is based on a document study of these plans and the minutes of meetings about the process of the municipal plan making, and semi-structured interviews. The research builds on new perceptions within governance and encompasses the role of agents in institutional theory. The article concludes that institutional entrepreneurs champion the legitimization of climate change actions and that the legitimizing strategies internally are highly reluctant to existing structures. However, the external legitimizing strategies also make it possible to bypass some of the bureaucratic structures. Anja Wejs is a visiting scholar with the Impact Group at NASA GISS. Her home institution is Aalborg University in Denmark, where she is working toward a Ph.D. in civil engineering with a focus on environmental management and spatial planning.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 5 April 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-04-05	Chakraborty, S. (University of Oxford) \| "Patient Noncompliance and the Volcanic Ash Crisis: Lessons learned in Trust and Risk Communication"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Managing risks associated with patient noncompliance and the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis requires deep consideration of the roles of trust and risk communication. While these cases are unique in their contexts, they provide parallel evidence for the importance of trust in risk management and the role of risk communication as a tool for mitigating harm. The consequences of patient noncompliance are not only poorer end-prognoses, but can also add up to 100 billion dollars annually in terms of public health costs stemming from more rapid onsets of disease, higher rates of hospitalizations, and lost productivity. A more salient example of risk consequences is that of the Icelandic volcanic ash crisis, which in 2010 grounded planes in a large area of European airspace for six days, costing airlines alone an estimated loss of 200 million euros a day and prompting the beginnings of a global health scare. The magnitude of such adverse outcomes related to chronic noncompliance and the ash cloud merits consideration of the challenges related to long-term and emergency risk communication, particularly in relation to the current climate of distrust. This talk will pull from published and forthcoming articles on the two cases and consider them both individually and together in regards to the lessons learned in trust and risk communication.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 5 May 2011	2011-05-05	Stadler, Turu Gertaud (Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University) \| “Intervention Effects of Information and Self-Regulation on Behavior Change Over the Course of Two Years”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 6 October 2011	2011-10-06	Gong, M. & Heal, G. \| “Why Do People Care About the Sea Lions? A Fishing Game to Study Biodiversity Value”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 7 April 2011	2011-04-07	Schade, Christian (Professor of Business, Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin?) \| “Holding on for Too Long? Rational vs. ‘Sunk Cost’ Driven Determinants of Persistence”?	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Disinvestment, in the sense of project termination and liquidation of assets including the cession of a venture, is an important realm of entrepreneurial decision making. This study presents the results of an experimental investigation modeling the choice to disinvest as a dynamic problem of optimal stopping in which the patterns of decisions are analyzed with entrepreneurs and non-entrepreneurs. Our experimental results reject the standard net present value approach as an account of observed behavior.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 8 December 2011, 2:30-3:30pm	2011-12-08	Dowd-Uribe, B. \| “Decision Making in Decentralized Water Governance Committees in Burkina Faso”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 8 March 2012, 2:30-3:30pm	2012-03-08	Willis, Derek W. (Columbia University); Treuer, Galen (Columbia University); Miron-Shatz, Talya (University of Pennsylvania) \| "The impact of framing effects on the decisions of infectious disease experts"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract: The goal of the study was to understand how the policy decision making choices of public health researchers and professionals are influenced by how these choices are framed. We developed our questionnaire with the classical decision making ‘Asian Disease’ problem in mind (Tversky and Kahneman, 1981). Tvesky and Kahneman found that people were prone to making risky choices when alternatives are phrased as ‘people dying,’ and risk averse when alternatives are framed as ‘people saved.’ In other words, individuals are risk-averse when choices between alternative disease control programs are presented as gains (number of lives saved) but risk-seeking when these same choices are presented as losses (number of lives lost). Our study was the first attempt to target public health researchers and professionals to determine if the responses of this population were consistent with previous studies which targeted the general public. In a study of 1140 international infectious disease experts (44% female, median age of 45, 56% from OECD countries), subjects from countries with a lower Human Development Index, a UNDP statistic of a country's human development, are more likely to choose the risky option in a modified version of the 'Asian Disease' experiment. Each subject made two choices, one with the 'save' frame and one with the 'will die' frame. Generalized mixed effects logistic regression analysis, controlling for within subject random effects, finds that for every 0.1 increase in HDI the log likelihood of choosing the risky option decreases by 0.18 (p< 0.001). High numeracy (p< 0.001) and clinical experience (p< 0.1) are also associated with decreases in the log likelihood of risky choice taking. These findings contradict the findings of Olivola and Sagara (2009) that individuals from countries where high-mortality events are more common are less likely to be risk-seeking in mortality-related decisions. This discrepancy could be because the Asian Disease task does not actually frame risk. Kuhberger and Gradl (2011) find the task’s positive (save) and negative (die) frames only impact perception of the riskless (certain) option not the risky (probabilistic) option. Analysis of open ended responses from participants in our study provides some support for Khuberger and Gradl, suggesting the need for a new risky choice framing experiment.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 9 February 2012, 2:30-3:30pm	2012-02-09	Diana Reckien \| "Subjective realities of climate change - How mental maps of impacts deliver socially sensible adaptation options"	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Abstract: This paper discusses the perceived impacts of weather-related extreme events on different social groups in New Delhi, India. Using network statistics and scenario analysis with the Fuzzy Cognitive Maps, the analysis provides quantitative and qualitative measures to compare impacts of and adaptation strategies to rain events and heat waves for, e.g., low-income streetsellers, planners, and other professionals, among others. I hope for a lively discussion regarding the methodology. A similar study will be conducted in NYC, which raises questions of transferability as well as adaptability of the methodology.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Thursday, 9 June 2011	2011-06-09	Viderman, E. (Climate & Society MA Student, Columbia University) \| “The Name of the Game is Rolling Fire: A Natural Disaster Game”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	The game is designed to see how students/adults make decisions when they are faced with environmental uncertainty. The six natural disasters that the players are faced with include: Tornado, Hurricane, Wildfire, Drought, Flood (Heavy rains), and Volcanic eruption. Each player/team starts off with $5,000 and risk losing that money based on the decision that they make. However, as in the real world, the best decision is not always the one that pays off (it is often a “roll of the dice”). This is geared to start discussions on decision making and to observe patterns based on a person’s income.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, 7 June 2011	2011-06-07	Strauss, B. (Executive Director, Climate Central) \| “The Slow Tsunami: Finding Compelling Ways to Present Sea Level Rise and Flooding Risks”?	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Climate Central is in the process of designing a next-generation online map and interactive database to communicate sea level rise- and storm surge-driven coastal flooding risks. I will quickly review ideas I presented in March, and then share design and program planning updates, and challenges, that have arisen since then. I would be deeply grateful for thoughtful conversation and brainstorming about how we can design our map and the broader effort it is part of to be as effective as possible in communicating with multiple audiences.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, December 11th, 2012, 2:30-4pm	2012-12-11	James Cornwell \| Preventing Guilt and Promoting Virtue: Motivating Generosity	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Research has generally assumed that when you pry away external things like incentives and social approval, you are left with "true" moral motivation. This motivation also tends to be treated as a unitary construct, particularly when it comes to things like altruism. Two studies I've conducted in collaboration with Dave Krantz and Tory Higgins suggest that the moral motivation involved in charitable giving might take at least two different forms, and that people might give more or less depending on the motivational framing of the decision.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, November 13th, 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-11-13	Guillermo Podestá \| Decision processes involved in a model of agricultural production in the Argentine Pampas	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Decision processes involved in a model of agricultural production in the Argentine Pampas Guillermo Podestá University of Miami, Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science A major strength of CRED has been the synergistic combination of laboratory and field studies. During the planning for CRED2, a third complementary component was suggested: computer modeling and simulation. Modeling helps to explore theoretical concepts or to reproduce real-world patterns observed in the field. Moreover the modeling process forces researchers to provide unambiguous descriptions of the processes of interest, and plausible parameter values associated with that process. For these reasons, any knowledge gaps become immediately apparent during model specification and implementation. In this talk, I describe several individual decision mechanisms included in the “Pampas Model” (PM) of agricultural production systems in the Argentine Pampas. The PM was developed to explore and understand the dynamics of structural and land use changes in agriculture in the Pampas. We used agent-based modeling, a powerful technique for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous individuals to assess emerging system level patterns. Agent-based models (ABMs) are able to produce regional land use patterns that (1) consider heterogeneity among decision-makers (e.g., in personality/financial characteristics, goals and attitudes); (2) incorporate human decision-making and responses to climate in a formal and spatially explicit way, taking into account realistic processes such as imitation, learning, and adaptation; and (3) include social interactions among decision-makers and institutions, relevant to dissemination of climate information, adoption of innovations, and formation of social norms guiding climate adaptation. The talk will describe various individual decision mechanisms in the Pampas Model that contemplate personal goals (e.g., maximizing annual profit, achieving a desired progress over a longer time horizon). Decisions are made in the context of physical (climate), economic (output prices, costs), social (neighbors, social networks) and technological (e.g., adoption of innovations) contexts. To ensure conceptual validity of the processes, an interactive participatory process involved interactions with regional technical experts. In experiments using simplified mechanisms and trajectories of drivers in the Pampas Model produces patterns highly consistent with observed structural changes in the Pampas: (a) expansion of agriculture and dominance of soybean, (b) reduction in the number of farmers, and (c) increase in land farmed by tenants.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, November 20th, 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-11-20	Nada Petrovic \| UltraEx: An integrated study of the social and environmental dimensions of community gardens in East Harlem	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	I will present preliminary results of a mixed-methods study conducted in 35 community gardens in East Harlem. The goals of the project are to (1) characterize the environmental services provided by community gardens, in particular those related to storm-water runoff and temperature (2) understand the social dynamics within the gardens and how they relate to patterns of use and feelings of attachment and (3) characterize how varying modes of garden governance affect the social and environmental outcomes of these spaces. Data collection included an environmental inventory of 35 gardens, 52 semi-structured gardener interviews, and 6 semi-structured institutional interviews.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, October 16th, 2012, 2:30-3:45pm	2012-10-16	Jennifer Helgeson \| Gauging Individuals’ Risk Perception through the Use of Games and Experiments: From Agricultural Micro-insurance to Homeowner Flood Insurance	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Jennifer Helgeson, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, Department of Geography & Environment, London School of Economics & Political Science I will present two projects that focus upon how individuals' understand and estimate climate change-related risks. The first is a paper (recently accepted to “Ecology and Society”) that uses games and a mixed-method large-n field survey to gauge Ugandan farmers’ perception of weather-related hazards and the use of agricultural microinsurance. The second is an experiment under development that looks at individuals’ understanding of risk distribution for long-term climate-related risks where there is ambiguity. We propose to use the frame of flood insurance. Abstract 1: Vulnerability to weather disasters: the choice of coping strategies in rural Uganda When a natural disaster hits, the affected households try to cope with its impacts. A variety of coping strategies may be employed, from reducing current consumption to disposing of productive assets. The latter strategies are especially worrisome, as they may reduce the capacity of the household to generate income in the future, possibly leading to chronic poverty. In this paper, we use the results of a household survey in rural Uganda to ask, first, what coping strategies would tend to be employed in the event of a weather disaster, second, given that multiple strategies can be chosen, in what combinations would they tend to be employed, and, third, given that asset-liquidation strategies can be particularly harmful for the future income prospects of households, what determines their uptake? Our survey is one of the largest of its kind, containing over 3000 observations garnered by local workers using smart-phone technology. We find that in this rural sample by far the most frequently reported choice would be to sell livestock. This is rather striking, since asset-based theories would predict more reliance on strategies like eating and spending less today, which avoid disposal of productive assets. It may well be that livestock are held as a form of liquid savings to, among other things, help bounce back from a weather disaster. Yet we do find that other strategies, which might undermine future prospects, are avoided, notably selling land or the home, and disrupting the children’s education. Our econometric analysis reveals a fairly rich set of determinants of different subsets of coping strategies. Perhaps most notably, households with a more educated head are much less likely to choose coping strategies involving taking their own children out of education. Abstract 2: This research project attempts to determine individual understanding of risk distribution, especially when the risk is characterized by low probability, high impact outcomes. We use the context of flood-related risk and individuals’ related insurance decisions. Within this frame we compare an objective probability distribution with individuals’ subjective perception of the risk distribution. There is a rich existent literature on the failure of individuals to correctly assess disaster risks, especially in comparison to expert risk assessments (for a review see: Slovic, 2000). Specifically, Prospect Theory (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979) suggests that faced with weak ambiguity in risk decisions, individual judge subjective probabilities and then transform them via a weighting function based on subjective expectations (i.e. rational biases). It is suspected that the factors driving probability weighting in decisions under risk vary across individuals; however, this aspect has not been explored in the experimental literature extensively. We attempt to address this issue through an experiment assessing an individual’s perception over the probability of flood risks. To this point we will assess the difference between the objective probability density functions and the respondent’s s subjective probability, as revealed by her choice patterns throughout the game. Additionally, under some treatments the subject is asked to provide a self-reported value for the probability she assigns to the disaster outcome as well as her confidence in this estimation. This self-reported probability may be compared to the revealed subjective probability as well as the objective probability density function. Furthermore, we assess variation in the precision of the subject’s estimation given responses to different underlying objective probability density functions.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Tuesday, October 9th, 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-10-09	Katherine Thompson \| Requesting CRED Lab feedback for the Volcanism in the American Southwest conference talk.	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	At this week's CRED lab meeting, I will present an outline of an upcoming talk I'll be giving at the upcoming Volcanism in the American Southwest conference. The conference will bring together vulcanologists and seismologists, as well as emergency managers and other practitioners, to discuss how that group might best react in an "extended volcanic crisis." This type of event would combine the unique characteristics of (a) a largely unknown/poorly-understood/unanticipated, but highly dread hazard; (b) a long period of heightened alert level, with great uncertainty about when or even whether the situation might escalate into a full-fledged eruption; and (c) a very large geographical area at risk from a single hazard event.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Wednesday, 12 January 2011	2011-01-12	Attari, S. \| “Human Behavior and Energy Consumption”?	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Understanding the relationship between human behavior and energy use is vital to decrease per capita energy consumption. In this presentation, I summarize my recent study where participants reported their perceptions of energy consumption for a variety of household activities. When asked for the single most effective strategy they could implement to conserve energy, most participants mentioned curtailment (e.g., turning off lights) rather than efficiency improvements (e.g., installing more efficient light bulbs), in contrast to experts’ recommendations. Participants had small overestimates for low-energy activities and large underestimates for high-energy activities. Follow-up studies show that participants find implementing recommended changes to decrease energy consumption relatively easy and that they want to incorporate easier non-effective behaviors for themselves.
CRED LAB MEETING \| Wednesday, 23 February 2011	2011-02-23	Johnson, E. & Broad, K. \| “Using New Media Applications in Understanding Decision Architecture and Climate Change”	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED LAB MEETING \|Tuesday, September 25th, 2012, 2:30-4:00pm	2012-09-25	Courtney St. John \| The U.S. Navy's Approach to Climate Change Adaptation	2012 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Courtney will provide an overview of the U.S. Navy's adaptation to climate change. The talk will describe why the Navy cares about global climate change, its strategy to address this issue, and actions the Navy is taking. The discussion will highlight lessons learned and communications strategies employed by the Navy's Task Force Climate Change. Prior to joining CRED, Courtney served as the Climate Change Affairs Officer for the United States Navy’s Task Force Climate Change where she oversaw execution of the Navy’s Climate Change Roadmap and the Navy’s adaptation to global climate change. Prior to that, Courtney held a John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship in the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy. She earned a Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning with a concentration in environmental planning and policy from Clemson University, where she focused on coastal management and shoreline change policy. She holds a BA in Historic Preservation from Mary Washington College.
CRED LAB MEETING: Master's Talks \| Thursday, 14 April 2011	2011-04-14	Cornwell, J. \| “Morality: Putting Virtue to the Test”?, Thompson, K \| “The Description-Experience Gap: A Neuroscience Approach”, Zaval, L. \| “Aging and Affective Forecasting in Risky Choice” and Scott, R.	2011 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Lab \| 8 November 2007	2007-11-08	Kostanovskya, A.	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Lab \| December 2, 2010	2010-12-02	Jeffers, J.	2010 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 1 August 2005	2005-08-01	Gelman, A. (Columbia University) \| "Multi-level modeling"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 10 July 2007	2007-07-10	Nisbet, M. (American University) \| "Framing and the Communication of Climate Science"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Despite expert agreement and record amounts of media attention, national surveys show that there remains major partisan gaps in perceptions of climate science and in support for specific policy measures. Even among those citizens who consider climate change to be a problem, it still ranks among the bottom third of issues in political importance. Part of the reason is that citizens rely heavily on cognitive short-cuts such as partisanship and ideology to cut down on their choices about which issues to pay attention, which arguments to accept as valid, and which information sources to trust...
CRED Seminar Series \| 11 April 2007	2007-04-11	Tortora, B. and Muller, G. (Gallop Organization) \| "Gallup World Poll on Well Being"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 11 December 2007	2007-12-11	Velez, M.A. (Columbia University) \| "Distributional Choices under Asymmetric Productivity: Trust and Water in the North East Brazil."	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Preliminary data from the pilot in Brazil
CRED Seminar Series \| 13 April 2005	2005-04-13	Hollingshead, A. (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) \| "Strategic Information Sharing in Group Decision Making"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 13 July 2005	2005-07-13	Patt, T. (Boston University) \| "Aligned Incentives, Accountability, and the Use of Expert Advice"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 13 June 2007	2006-06-13	Suarez, P. (Boston University) \| "Towards a research agenda on the role of audiovisual tools in community-level adaptation"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 13 November 2007	2007-11-13	Assmuth, T. (Tufts University and Finnish Environmental Institute) \| Humble Leaps: Integrated risk assessment as a research, policy and cultural challenge, with European perspectives especially in chemicals control and climate change”	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 13 September 2006	2006-09-13	Russel, R. (Columbia University) \| "Social schemata: identifying pathways to sustainable societies"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 14 December 2005	2005-12-14	Fonseca, M. (Columbia University) \| "Wage Bargaining Under Uncertainty"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 15 March 2006	2006-03-15	Siegfried, T. (Columbia University) \| "Novel Approaches to Multi-objective Decision Making with Application to Water Resources Management"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 16 November 2005		Leiserowitz, A. (Decision Research) \| "Environmental Risk Perception"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 16 October 2007	2007-10-16	Domanski, J. (Princeton University) \| "Farming for Climate Change Solutions: Are Non-Economic Motivations Important in Agricultural Emissions Trading Markets? (A research proposal)"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 17 February 2006	2006-02-17	Arvai, J. (Michigan State University) \| "Less Is Often More: Making the Case for Decision Aiding in Environmental Risk Consultations"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 18 April 2007	2007-04-18	Chollete, L. (Norwegian School of Economics and Business & Norwegian Central Bank) \| "Economic Implications of Extreme Events"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 18 December 2007	2007-12-18	Blavatskyy, P. (University of Zurich) \| "Stochastic Decision Theory"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 2 November 2005	2005-11-02	Arora, P. (Columbia University) \| "To Cooperate or Not: Effect of Group Interaction on Social Dilemmas"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| 2 October 2006	2006-10-02	Laciana, C. and Bert, F. \| "Modelling Adaptive Management in Agroecosystems in the Pampas in Response to Climate Variability and Other Risk Factors"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 2 October 2007	2007-10-02	Hardisty, D & Monticello, D. (Columbia University) \| Discussion of the designs of their next experiments	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 20 July 2007	2007-07-20	Hudson, L. (Office of Minority Affairs Intern, Columbia University) \| "The Role of Contextual Motivators in Decision Making"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 20 July 2007	2007-07-20	Odusanya, M (Office of Minority Affairs Intern, Columbia University) \| "Social Connectedness and its Affect on Decision-Making”	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 21 February 2007	2007-02-21	Vasi, B. (ISERP) \| "Message Framing and Mobilization of Collective Action to Address Global Climate Change"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 22 February 2006	2006-02-22	Ashraf, N. (Harvard University) \| "Measuring Time-inconsistency and Designing Commitment Devices"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 23 November 2005	2005-11-23	Gelman, A. and Zhang, T. (Columbia University) \| "Rich state, poor state, red state, blue state: What's the matter with Connecticut?"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 23 October 2007	2007-10-23	Huberman, G. (Columbia Business School) \| "Preferred Risk Habitat of Individual Investors."	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 26 April 2006	2006-04-26	Doss, C. (Yale University) \| "Perceptions of Risk Within Pastoralist Households in East Africa"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 26 October 2005	2005-10-26	Gil, V. (Columbia University) \| "Social conflicts and transnational mining: ethnographic perspectives in Peru"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 27 November 2007	2007-11-27	Cutts, B. (ASU Decision Center for a Desert City)	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	Discussion of 1) the cumulative impact of information sources on the water awareness of the phoenix public (and potential justice issues therein); 2) the understanding of the role of science in organizational posturing surrounding a water supply controversy in northern AZ; 3) overlap and points of contact with CRED's research projects and research methodologies.
CRED Seminar Series \| 28 February 2007	2007-02-28	Koehler, D. (US EPA) \| "Economics and Decision Sciences Research at the EPA Office of Research and Development"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 30 May 2007	2007-05-30	Vasi, B. (Columbia University) \| "What types of educational campaigns are most effective in mobilizing the public to take actions against global climate change?"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab	We address the question ‘what types of educational campaigns are most effective in mobilizing the public to take actions against global climate change?’ We hypothesize that alarmist messages could backfire because they undermine the perception of efficacy and that ‘crisis’ messages that emphasize over-consumption have a more negative effect on efficacy than do ‘crisis’ messages that highlight the consequences of over-consumption. We are in the early stages of designing a web-based vignette study that will be conducted in five different countries (and we need fresh ideas…
CRED Seminar Series \| 30 November 2005	2005-11-30	Clarke, L. (London School of Economics) \| "How much is a forecast worth?"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 30 October 2007	2007-10-30	Pogrebna, G. (Columbia University) \| "Entry to Multiple Markets and Coordination Failure: An Experimental Approach"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 31 January 2007	2007-01-31	Rosenzweig, C. (NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies) \| "Assessing Climate Risks with New York Metropolitan Region Decision-makers: Experiences from the Metro East Coast Study and Beyond"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 6 December 2006	2006-12-06	Pfirman, S. (Barnard College) \| "Women and Interdisciplinary Ways of Working"	2006 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series \| 9 October 2007	2007-10-09	Zimmer, A. (Humboldt Universitat zu Berlin) \| "Insurance Decisions with Default Risk"	2007 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| April 29, 2008	2008-04-29	Peterson, N. (Columbia University) \| "Risk management, vulnerability, and index insurance in agricultural development"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| April 8, 2008		Arora, P. (Columbia University) \| “Preliminary findings from a new coordination study”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| February 1, 2008	2008-02-01	Yoskowitz, N. (Columbia University) \| "Environmental Decision Making by Individuals and Groups"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| February 19, 2008	2008-02-19	Hardisty, D. (Columbia University) \| "Framing Effects on Support for Carbon Reduction Measures”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| February 26, 2008	2008-02-26	Murphy, R. (Columbia University) \| “Measuring Social Value Orientation”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| February 5, 2008	2008-02-05	Bodnar, S. (Teachers College, Columbia University) \| "Behavioral Enactments of a Changing Relationship to the Earth”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| July 1, 2008	2008-07-01	Reid, A. (Columbia University) \| “The effect of affiliation on criminal decision making,” Pilot test for senior thesis study	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| June 10, 2008	2008-06-10	Mohammed, S. (Penn State University) \| “The Measurement of Decision Styles: The Development and Validation of Rational, Intuitive, and Avoidant Scales”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| June 20, 2008	2008-06-20	Osgood, D. and Velez, M. (Columbia University) \| Pilot test of an insurance game for Ceara, Brazil	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| June 24, 2008	2008-06-24	Weber, E. (Columbia University) \| "Behavioral Decision Theory and Environmental Policy"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| June 3, 2008	2008-06-03	Krantz, D. (Columbia University) \| Discussion on Temporal Framing	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| March 11, 2008	2008-03-11	Hardisty, D. (Columbia University) \| “Open Access Matters”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| May 13, 2008	2008-05-13	Appelt, K. (Columbia University) \| "When the role fits: Regulatory fit in negotiations"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED SEMINAR SERIES \| May 6, 2008	2008-05-06	Pogrebna, G. (Columbia University) \| "The Effect of Framing in the Interdependent Security Games"	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
CRED Seminar Series: April 22, 2008	2008-04-22	Velez, M. (Columbia University) \| “Collective Titling and the Process of Institution Building: Common Property Regime in the Colombian Pacific”	2008 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
Crippled NY subways spark infrastructure, climate questions	2012-11-03	CNN	CRED in the News
Cultural differences in risk taking and precaution: The relative roles of risk perception and risk attitude.	2007	Weber, E. U., & Ancker, J. S. \| In J. Wiener, L. Rogers, J. Hammitt, & P. Sand (Eds.), The Reality of Precaution: Comparing Approaches to Risk Regulation in the US and Europe. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press	Publications
Cultural Programs to Focus on Climate Change	2013-07-15	Allan Kozinn, The New York Times	CRED in the News
Cultural styles of participation in farmers’ discussions of seasonal climate forecasts in Uganda	2010-01-21	Roncoli, C., Orlove, B.S., Kabugo, M.R., & Waiswa, M.M. \| Agriculture and Human Values, 28(1), 123-138	Publications	Abstract: Climate change is confronting African farmers with growing uncertainties. Advances in seasonal climate predictions offer potential for assisting farmers in dealing with climate risk. Experimental cases of forecast dissemination to African rural communities suggest that participatory approaches can facilitate understanding and use of uncertain climate information. But few of these studies integrate critical reﬂections on participation that have emerged in the last decade which reveal how participatory approaches can miss social dynamics of power at the community level and in the broader context. Furthermore, neither climate application research nor theoretical critiques of participation fully examine the culturally constructed nature of participation. Drawing on sociolinguistic analysis, in-depth interviews, and ethnographic observation, this paper examines how Ugandan farmers engage in participation in the context of discussions of seasonal climate forecasts. Forecasts were presented to farmers groups whose members were then asked to discuss the forecast among themselves. In doing so, groups sought to develop a common understanding of the forecast and consensual plans for response strategies. Focusing on one particular group meeting as an example, we show how different cultural styles of participation affect the interpretation of the forecast and the formulation of response strategies. Group interaction is shown to be mostly structured around two styles of participation. On the one hand, there is the ‘‘Western’’ style advocated by NGOs and the government, which centers on ensuring that all individuals who are present have opportunities to speak during discussion and to vote on group decisions. On the other hand, a ‘‘Kiganda’’ style of participation emphasizes the importance of afﬁrming ties to a collectivity, respect for social hierarchy, deployment of good manners, and consensus building. The case study illuminates how the performance of different styles of participation is grounded in localized frameworks of language and culture but also draw on political and policy discourses at the national level. Although a cultural high value on consensus may work in favor of prominent members, the availability of multiple styles of participation also enables group members to exercise their agency in positive ways. Attention to the interplay of different styles of participation throws light on the subtle social processes that shape how knowledge is assessed, which sources are trusted, which and whose interpretations prevail, what options are deemed viable, how costs and beneﬁts are calculated, and whose resources are mobilized in the effort to reduce vulnerability to climate risk. These are key questions for an assessment of the role of boundary organizations, such as farmer associations, in the communication and application of climate forecasts in agriculture.
Darkening Peaks: Glacial Retreat, Science and Society.	2008-02-01	Orlove, B.S., Wiegandt, E., & Luckman, B.H. (Eds.), Berkeley: University of California Press	Publications	Description: Looking up at mountains, people now see bare, dark rock where white snow and ice once stood—dramatic evidence of the accelerating pace of glacier retreat due to climate change. This groundbreaking work is the first to provide an integrated, multidisciplinary, global exploration of the scientific, social, and economic dimensions of this phenomenon. Bringing together contributors from five continents, Darkening Peaks discusses the ways that scientists have observed and modeled glaciers, tells how climate change is altering their size and distribution, and looks closely at their effect on human life. ISBN: 9780520253056
David Hardisty on his research at CRED- NPR Colombia interview	2009-07-31	Colombian National Public Radio	CRED in the News
Day's weather influence people form global warming opinions	2014-01-13	Z New India	CRED in the News
Day's weather influence people form global warming opinions	2014-01-13	The Economic Times	CRED in the News
Day's weather influence people form global warming opinions	2014-01-13	IANS \| Business Standard	CRED in the News
Decadal climate variability in the Argentine Pampas: regional impacts of plausible climate scenarios on agricultural systems	2009	Podestá, G.P., Bert, F., Rajagopalan, B., Apipattanavis, S., Laciana, C., Weber, E.U., Easterling, W., Katz, R., Letson D., & Menéndez, A. \| Climate Research, 40: 199-210	Publications	Abstract: The Pampas of Argentina have shown some of the most consistently increasing trends in precipitation during the 20th century. The rainfall increase has partly contributed to a significant expansion of agricultural area, particularly in climatically marginal regions of the Pampas. However, it is unclear if current agricultural production systems, which evolved partly in response to enhanced climate conditions, may remain viable if (as entirely possible) climate reverts to a drier epoch. We assess the potential impacts of a plausible decreasing trend in precipitation on the economic sustainability of 2 contrasting agricultural systems in the Pampas: Pergamino, in the most productive subregion of the Pampas, and Pilar, in the northern, semi-arid margin of the region. Also, we explore the scope for adaptation to changing climate. In the case where there is no adaptation, if precipitation decreases, as is plausible, impacts may be quite different between locations: whereas in Pergamino crop economic returns would not change noticeably, the more marginal Pilar would experience a marked decrease in profits and an increase in production risks. However, potential negative impacts might be mitigated, in part, if farmers adapt their agronomic management using current available technology or know-how. 10.3354/cr00807
Decision making under climate uncertainty: The power of understanding judgment and decision processes.	2012-04-15	Marx, S.M. & Weber, E.U. \| In T. Dietz & D.C. Bidwell (Eds.), Climate Change in the Great Lakes. MSU Press (Chapter 5: 99-128)	Publications	Abstract: People living in the Great Lakes region are already feeling the effects of a changing climate. Shifts in seasonal temperatures and precipitation patterns could have dramatic impacts on the economy, ecology, and quality of life. In this illuminating and thorough volume, leading scholars address the challenge of preparing for climate change in the region, where decision makers from various sectors — government, agriculture, recreation, and tourism — must increasingly be aware of the need to incorporate climate change into their short- and long-term planning. The chapters in this revealing book, written by some of the foremost climate change scholars in North America, outline the major trends in the climate of the Great Lakes region, how humans might cope with the uncertainty of climate change impacts, and examples of on-the-ground projects that have addressed these issues. 1611860121
Delusions Abound on Energy Savings, Study Says	2010-08-18	The New York Times	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Depois que a chuva não veio. Respostas sociais às secas no Nordeste, na Amazônia e no Sul do Brasil.	2010-01-01	Taddei, R. & Gamboggi, A. \| Fortaleza: Fundação Cearense de Meteorologia e Recursos Hídricos/Comitas Institute for Anthropological Study, ISBN: 978-85-62406-06-5.	Publications
Designing Index-Based Weather Insurance for Farmers in Adi Ha, Ethiopia. Report to OXFAM America	2009-07-01	Dinku, T, Giannini, A, Hansen, J, Holthaus, E, Ines, A, Kaheil, Y, Karnauskas, K, Lyon, B, Madajewicz, M, Mclaurin, M, Mullally, C, Norton, M, Osgood, D, Peterson, N, Robertson, A, Shirley, K, Small, C, Vicarelli, M \| IRI Technical Report 09-04	Publications, Reports	Introduction: This report documents the process and results of the index insurance design effort leading to the index insurance contracts for Adi Ha in 2009. This report represents deliverables 1 and 2 in the terms of reference with Oxfam America, it outlines and compares analysis and design methodologies including the performance of rainfall simulators for index-based contract design. It also details contracts, methodologies, associated issues, and important lessons learned. A separate project report details the Experimental Games, deliverable 3 in the terms of reference.
Designing Weather Insurance Contracts for Farmers in Malawi, Tanzania, and Kenya, Final Report to the Commodity Risk Management Group, ARD, World Bank.		Osgood, D., McLaurin, M., Carriquiry, M., Mishra, A., Fiondella, F., Hansen, J., Peterson, N., & Ward, N. \| IRI Technical Report 07-02	Publications, Reports	Introduction: I n this report, we describe our project products to World Bank’s Commodity Risk Management Group (CMRG) in the development and evaluation of index insurance contracts for smallholder farmers in Malawi, Tanzania, and Kenya. The development of some products we are providing was supported at no cost by the NSF-funded Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. Index-insurance is one type of weather risk management that has recently developed as a potential tool to reduce weather risk in agriculture. While traditional insurance insures against crop failure (actual loss), index insurance insures for a specific event or risk, such as rainfall deficits (Skees 1999). Thus, the index insurance removes one or more production risks, but does not account for the loss itself. This method addresses two problems associated with traditional crop insurance: moral hazard (where farmers have incentive to let their crops fail in order to receive a payout) and adverse selection (where those farmers less skilled at farming purchase the insurance, resulting in higher premium levels and more frequent payouts). Since the index insurance only covers a specific risk, it only provides partial protection and is therefore only one part of a complete risk management package. The index insurance also becomes a more affordable option, in that there is no need for in-field assessment of damage, as damage is able to be tracked by weather data directly (in the case of rainfall, a rain gauge would be the device used).
Developing climate adaptation: The intersection of climate research and development programmes in index insurance,	2012-04-16	Peterson, N. \| Development and Change, 43(2): 557-584.	Publications	Abstract: Using a case study from Ethiopia, this article examines the ways in which climate information and economic development interact in climate adaptation programmes. Microinsurance programmes have become very popular as an adaptation strategy but there has been little attention paid to the social, economic and political aspects of implementation. Examining one case in relation to the broader literature on climate adaptation projects suggests that greater attention needs to be paid to existing coping strategies, introduction of additional market risks, local capacity building and the socio-political context of implementation. Climate change cannot be viewed as a technical problem only; it has a social dimension as well. 10.1111/j.1467-7660.2012.01767.x
Development, Participation, and the Ethnography of Ambiguity.	2011-01-01	Glenzer, K., N. Peterson, C. Roncoli. Agriculture and Human Values, 28:97–98.	CRED Lab
DiCaprio climate change film ‘Before the Flood’ debuts as Hurricane Matthew looms	2016-10-05	Joey Flechas \| Miami Herald	CRED in the News
Diffusion of treatment research: Does open access matter?	2008-04-18	Hardisty, D.J., & Haaga, D. A. \| Journal of Clinical Psychology, 64(7), 821-839.	Publications	Abstract: Advocates of the Open Access movement claim that removing access barriers will substantially increase the diffusion of academic research. If successful, this movement could play a role in efforts to increase utilization of psychotherapy research by mental health practitioners. In a pair of studies, mental health professionals were given either no citation, a normal citation, a linked citation, or a free access citation and were asked to find and read the cited article. After 1 week, participants read a vignette on the same topic as the article and gave recommendations for an intervention. In both studies, those given the free access citation were more likely to read the article, yet only in one study did free access increase the likelihood of making intervention recommendations consistent with the article.10.1002/jclp.20492
Dire Warnings Issued on Diminishing Arctic Ice	2012-09-21	Voice of America	CRED in the News
Discounting future green: Money vs. the environment	2009-08-01	Hardisty, D., & Weber, E. U. \| Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138(3), 329-340	Publications	Abstract: In 3 studies, participants made choices between hypothetical financial, environmental, and health gains and losses that took effect either immediately or with a delay of 1 or 10 years. In all 3 domains, choices indicated that gains were discounted more than losses. There were no significant differences in the discounting of monetary and environmental outcomes, but health gains were discounted more and health losses were discounted less than gains or losses in the other 2 domains. Correlations between implicit discount rates for these different choices suggest that discount rates are influenced more by the valence of outcomes (gains vs. losses) than by domain (money, environment, or health). Overall, results indicate that when controlling as many factors as possible, at short to medium delays, environmental outcomes are discounted in a similar way to financial outcomes, which is good news for researchers and policy makers alike. 10.1037/a0016433
Disease Forecasts and Livestock Health Disclosure: A Shepherd's Dilemma	2010-02-02	Sheriff, G., & Osgood, D. \| American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 92(3) 1–13, DOI 10.1093/ajae/aap042.	Publications	Abstract: We analyze how to induce sellers to disclose food safety. With repeated interactions and safety correlated over time, cash transfers alone do not ensure disclosure. Perfect, but costly, testing ensures disclosure with a complex lottery that may be difficult to implement in practice. In contrast, even a noisy quality forecast allows the buyer to induce perfect disclosure with a simple pricing scheme. Forecast introduction may benefit or harm sellers. After introduction, sellers may suffer from increases in forecast precision. As an illustration, we cast our model in the context of Rift Valley fever in an East African livestock market.10.1093/ajae/aap042
Divergence between Individual Perceptions and Objective Indicators of Tail Risks: Evidence from Floodplain Residents in New York City	2015-07-04	Botzen, W. W., Kunreuther, H., & Michel-Kerjan, E. \| Judgement and Decision Making, 10(4):365-385	Publications	Abstract: This study provides the first comprehensive analysis of individual perceptions of tail risks. It focuses not only on the probability, as has been studied by Nicholas Barberis and others, but also on anticipation of damage. We examine how those perceptions relate to experts’ estimates and publicly available risk information. Behavioural factors—availability bias, threshold models of choice, worry and trust—are found to have a significant impact on risk perceptions. The probability of tail events is overestimated, which is consistent with probability weighting in prospect theory. Potential damage is underestimated, one reason why individuals do not invest in protective measures.
Do You Have a Clue How Much Water You Really Use?	2014-03-06	CKNW (Vancouver, BC)	CRED in the News
Do You Have a Clue How Much Water You Really Use?	2014-03-06	John Metcalfe \| The Atlantic	CRED in the News
Doing the right thing willingly: Behavioral decision theory and environmental policy.	2012-11-26	Weber, E.U. \| In Shafir, E. (Ed.) The Behavioral Foundations of Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press	Publications	Book summary: In recent years, remarkable progress has been made in behavioral research on a wide variety of topics, from behavioral finance, labor contracts, philanthropy, and the analysis of savings and poverty, to eyewitness identification and sentencing decisions, racism, sexism, health behaviors, and voting. Research findings have often been strikingly counterintuitive, with serious implications for public policymaking. In this book, leading experts in psychology, decision research, policy analysis, economics, political science, law, medicine, and philosophy explore major trends, principles, and general insights about human behavior in policy-relevant settings. Their work provides a deeper understanding of the many drivers--cognitive, social, perceptual, motivational, and emotional--that guide behaviors in everyday settings. They give depth and insight into the methods of behavioral research, and highlight how this knowledge might influence the implementation of public policy for the improvement of society.
Don’t blame Irene	2012-11-08	The New York World	CRED in the News
Drought Insurance for Ganaderos in the Dominican Republic	2014-08-25	Sofía Martínez, Radost Stanimirova, Daniel Osgood \| International Research Institute for Climate & Society	CRED in the News
Dynamic Simulation as an Approach to Understanding Hurricane Risk Response: Insights from the Stormview Lab	2013-08	Meyer, R., Broad, K., Orlove, B., Petrovic. N., (2013) \| Risk Analysis 33(8): 1532-1552	Publications	Abstract: This article investigates the use of dynamic laboratory simulations as a tool for studying decisions to prepare for hurricane threats. A prototype web-based simulation named Stormview is described that allows individuals to experience the approach of a hurricane in a computer-based environment. In Stormview participants can gather storm information through various media, hear the opinions of neighbors, and indicate intentions to take protective action. We illustrate how the ability to exert experimental control over the information viewed by participants can be used to provide insights into decision making that would be difficult to gain from field studies, such as how preparedness decisions are affected by the nature of news coverage of prior storms, how a storm's movement is depicted in graphics, and the content of word-of-mouth communications. Data from an initial application involving a sample of Florida residents reveal a number of unexpected findings about hurricane risk response. Participants who viewed forecast graphics, which contained track lines depicting the most likely path of the storm, for example, had higher levels of preparation than those who saw graphics that showed only uncertainty cones-even among those living far from the predicted center path. Similarly, the participants who were most likely to express worry about an approaching storm and fastest to undertake preparatory action were those who, ironically, had never experienced one. Finally, external validity is evidenced by a close rank-order correspondence between patterns of information use revealed in the lab and that found in previous cross-sectional field studies.
Economic Value of Ecosystem Services, Minerals and Oil in a Melting Arctic: A Preliminary Assessment	2017-02-17	O’Garra, T. (2017). Economic value of ecosystem services, minerals and oil in a melting Arctic: a preliminary assessment. Ecosystem Services, 24, 180-186.	Publications	Abstract: The Arctic region is composed of unique marine and terrestrial ecosystems that provide a range of services to local and global populations. However, Arctic sea-ice is melting at an unprecedented rate, threatening many of these ecosystems and the services they provide. This short communication provides a preliminary assessment of the quantity, distribution and economic value of key ecosystem services as well as geological resources such as oil and minerals provided by Arctic ecosystems to beneficiaries in the Arctic region and globally. Using biophysical and economic data from existing studies, preliminary estimates indicate that the Arctic currently provides about $281 billion per year (in 2016 US$) in terms of food, mineral extraction, oil production, tourism, hunting, existence values and climate regulation. However, given predictions of ice-free summers by 2037, many of the ecosystem services may be lost. We hope that this communication stimulates discussion among policy-makers regarding the value of ecosystem services and such geological resources as minerals and oil provided by the Arctic region, and the potential ecosystem losses resulting from Arctic melt, so as to motivate decisions vis a vis climate change mitigation before Arctic ice disappears completely.
Education increases belief in climate change — everywhere except in the U.S.	2015-07-29	Heather Smith \| Grist	CRED in the News
Efficiency and Equity in Negotiated Resource Transfers: contributions and limitations of trust with limited contracts.	2011-12-27	Pfaff, A., and M.A. Velez. \| Ecological Economics, Volume 74, Pages 55-63	Publications	Abstract: We consider a case of water reallocation in Brazil, one which has numerous analogs elsewhere. To permit empirical study of the effects of institutions that can facilitate or restrict allocations, we conducted field experiments to explore trust's potential when resource contracts are limited, using a novel asymmetric-productivity ultimatum game with a final surplus-sharing step added. As a form of informal institution, trust could in principle make rights and contracts unnecessary. We observe whether trust in compensation is in fact expected and expressed. We also explore whether trust is exploited, and the effect of communication, within our two bargaining structures: (1) no communication; and (2) with a non-binding message concerning the surplus to be shared. We see that our participants both expect and express trust that some of the surplus will be shared. Trust raises total output and some surplus is indeed shared: those who trust gain a bit on average; and the more trust was shown, the more was shared. However, often the trust was barely repaid. Further, the messages—found to help in other research—had little impact and were often untrue. In sum, trust does matter but both efficiency and equity could well rise with complete contracts.
Enabling energy conservation through effective decision aids	2015-01-01	Attari, S.Z., Rajagopal, D., \| Journal of Sustainability Education, 8	Publications	Abstract: Why don’t people adopt energy efficient appliances and curtail their behaviors to decrease energy use? People may not know which behaviors are truly effective and may be insufficiently motivated to change their behaviors. We focus on one area of this problem by first analyzing existing decision aids, tools available to help users make effective decisions. We explore EPA’s Energy Star program, DoE’s EERE calculators, and LBNL’s Home Energy Saver tool. We highlight their strengths and limitations and propose a framework to expand the functionality and uptake of the information through such aids. We suggest improvements along two broad areas. One area concerns the analytic capabilities and the information content of the decision aid, which focuses on (1) multiple goals and constraints, (2) hidden costs, and (3) heterogeneity in user characteristics. The other pertains to the framing so that users can easily process information through decision architecture by limiting choice overload and incorporating smart default options.
Enhancing the relevance of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways for climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability research	2014-02-01	van Ruijven, B.J., Levy, M.A., Agrawal, A., et al. \| Climatic Change, 122(3), 481-494.	Publications	Abstract: This paper discusses the role and relevance of the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) and the new scenarios that combine SSPs with representative concentration pathways (RCPs) for climate change impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (IAV) research. It first provides an overview of uses of social–environmental scenarios in IAV studies and identifies the main shortcomings of earlier such scenarios. Second, the paper elaborates on two aspects of the SSPs and new scenarios that would improve their usefulness for IAV studies compared to earlier scenario sets: (i) enhancing their applicability while retaining coherence across spatial scales, and (ii) adding indicators of importance for projecting vulnerability. The paper therefore presents an agenda for future research, recommending that SSPs incorporate not only the standard variables of population and gross domestic product, but also indicators such as income distribution, spatial population, human health and governance.
Environmental anthropologist sees climate change impacts ahead	2010-06-28	Hawaii 24/7	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Co-Director Kenny Broad.
Environmental citizenship in Latin America. Climate, Intermediate Organizations and Political Subjects.	2011-01-01	Orlove, B., Taddei, R., Podestá, G., Broad, K. \| Latin American Research Review 46: 115-140	Publications	Abstract: In recent decades, the impacts of climate on society and on human well-being have attracted increasing amounts of attention, and the forecasts that predict such impacts have become more accurate. Forecasts are now distributed and used more widely than they were in the past. This article reviews three cases of such use of forecasts in Latin America. It shows that in all cases, the users are concentrated in particular sectors and regions (agriculture in the Argentine pampas, fisheries on the Peruvian coast, water resources in northeastern Brazil) and that the forecasts are distributed not by government agencies but by intermediate organizations—semistatal organizations or nongovernmental organizations. It draws on the concept of environmental citizenship to discuss these cases and assesses them for such attributes of citizenship as equity, transparency, accountability, and promotion of collective goals. It traces the implications of these cases for the current era of global warming. 10.1353/lar.2011.0034
Environmental Labels May Discourage Conservatives from Buying Energy-Efficient Products	2013-04-30	Duke University Fuqua School of Business	CRED in the News
Ethnographic and participatory approaches to research on farmers' responses to climate predictions.	2006	Roncoli, C. \| Climate Research, 33, 81-99.	Publications	Abstract: This article synthesizes the state of the art in the application of ethnographic and participatory methods in climate application research. The review focuses on 2 aspects: (1) the cognitive and cultural landscape in which farmers’ understanding of climate and climate information is grounded and (2) the decision-making processes and environment which shape farmers’ adaptive strategies. The first part analyzes methods to elicit how farmers perceive and predict climate events and how these perspectives relate to scientific forecasts. It addresses the long-standing question of whether and how farmers understand the probabilistic nature of climate forecasts and how they assess the credibility and accuracy of such information. The second part examines approaches to characterizing the vulnerability of decision makers and to elucidating the configuration of options and obstacles that farmers face in using climate forecasts to mitigate risk. The complexities of farmers’ decisions and the difficulties of identifying the exact role that climate predictions play (and, therefore, of directly attributing impacts to them) are taken into account. Finally, the review highlights efforts to transcend the localized focus of farmer-centered approaches in order to capture interactions across sectors and scales. The review concludes by proposing that climate application research move from a ‘technology-adoption’ paradigm to a broader perspective on vulnerability and adaptation. This shift will entail a cross-scale, multi-sited research design and an interdisciplinary mix of interactive and structured tools and techniques. It will also require that the analytical focus be expanded to encompass local communities and their multiple action spaces as well as the higher spheres of decision-making, where policy and science are shaped. doi:10.3354/cr033081
Etnografia, Meio Ambiente e Comunicação Ambiental.	2011-01-01	Taddei, R. & Gamboggi, A. \| Caderno Pedagógico, Lageado v. 8, n. 2, p. 09-28	Publications
European Cities Slow to Adapt to Climate Change, New Study Says	2013-12-02	The Weather Channel	CRED in the News
Evidence of Demand for Index Insurance: Experimental Games and Commercial Transactions in Ethiopia	2014-02-20	Norton, M., Osgood, D., Madajewiczb, M., Holthaus, E., Peterson, N., Diroa, R., Mullally, C., Tehg, T., & Gebremichaelh, M., \| The Journal of Development Studies	Publications	Abstract: We present results of experimental games with smallholder farmers in Tigray, Ethiopia, in 2010, in which participants in the games allocated money across risk management options. One of the options was index insurance that was the same as commercial products sold locally. Participants exhibited clear preferences for insurance contracts with higher frequency payouts and for insurance over other risk management options, including high interest savings. The preference for higher frequency payouts is mirrored in commercial sales of the product, with commercial purchasers paying substantially higher premiums than the minimal, low frequency option available. This combined evidence challenges claims that the very poor universally choose minimal index insurance coverage and supports concerns that demand may outpace supply of responsible insurance products.
Excluding to include: (Non)participation in Mexican natural resource management.		Peterson, N. \| Agriculture and Human Values, Volume 28, Issue 1, pp 99-107	Publications	Abstract: Participatory processes are often intended to encourage inclusion of multiple perspectives in defining management means and goals. However, ideas about the legitimacy of certain uses and users of the resources can often lead to exclusion from participation. In this way, participation can be transformed from a process of inclusion of various resource users to one of exclusion. Using a case study from a marine protected area in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, and drawing on work in deliberative democracy, I present a typology of how individuals and groups can be excluded from participation. External exclusion includes non-invitation and other means for keeping participation from occurring. Internal exclusion refers to exclusionary events during participatory meetings. This analysis suggests that participation needs to be recognized as a valuable but easily manipulated tool in the design of projects like natural resource management.
Experience-based and description-based perceptions of long-term risk: Why global warming does not scare us (yet).	2006	Weber, E.U. \| Climatic Change, 77, 103-120	Publications	Abstract: It should come as no surprise that the governments and citizenries of many countries show little concern about climate change and its consequences. Behavioral decision research over the last 30 years provides a series of lessons about the importance of affect in perceptions of risk and in decisions to take actions that reduce or manage perceived risks. Evidence from a range of domains suggests that worry drives risk management decisions. When people fail to be alarmed about a risk or hazard, they do not take precautions. Recent personal experience strongly influences the evaluation of a risky option. Low-probability events generate less concern than their probability warrants on average, but more concern than they deserve in those rare instances when they do occur. Personal experience with noticeable and serious consequences of global warming is still rare in many regions of the world. When people base their decisions on statistical descriptions about a hazard provided by others, characteristics of the hazard identified as psychological risk dimensions predict differences in alarm or worry across different classes of risk. The time-delayed, abstract, and often statistical nature of the risks of global warming does not evoke strong visceral reactions. These results suggest that we should find ways to evoke visceral reactions towards the risk of global warming, perhaps by simulations of its concrete future consequences for people's home or other regions they visit or value. Increased concern about global warming needs to solicited carefully, however, to prevent a decrease in concern about other relevant risks. The generation of worry or concern about global warming may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for desirable or appropriate protective or mitigating behavior on part of the general public. 10.1007/s10584-006-9060-3
Expertise in an Age of Polarization: Evaluating Scientists’ Political Awareness and Communication Behaviors	2015-03-01	Nisbet, M.C., Markowitz, E. \| The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 658(1), 136-154	Publications	Abstract: During the George W. Bush administration, intense debate focused on the administration’s interference with the work of government scientists. In this study, analyzing a May/June 2009 survey of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), we evaluate the factors during this period that influenced scientists’ awareness of political interference and their media outreach and communication activities. Controlling for demographic and professional-level influences, those members who were more liberal in their political outlook, who were frequent blog readers, and who felt strongly about global warming were substantially more likely to have heard “a lot” about political interference. However, neither ideology, partisanship, nor opinion-intensity were predictive of the various media and communication behaviors assessed. Instead, the strongest predictor was the belief that media coverage was important for an individual’s career advancement. Implications for evaluating the expert community’s participation in future political debates are discussed.
Exploring associations between micro-level models of innovation diffusion and emerging macro-level adoption patterns		Laciana, C. E., S. L. Rovere and G. P. Podestá \| Physica A, (392), 1873-1884	Publications	Abstract: A micro-level agent-based model of innovation diffusion was developed that explicitly combines (a) an individual's perception of the advantages or relative utility derived from adoption, and (b) social influence from members of the individual's social network. The micro-model was used to simulate macro-level diffusion patterns emerging from different configurations of micro-model parameters. Micro-level simulation results matched very closely the adoption patterns predicted by the widely-used Bass macro-level model (Bass, 1969 [1]). For a portion of the p q domain, results from micro-simulations were consistent with aggregate-level adoption patterns reported in the literature. Induced Bass macro-level parameters p and q responded to changes in microparameters: (1) p increased with the number of innovators and with the rate at which innovators are introduced; (2) q increased with the probability of rewiring in small-world networks, as the characteristic path length decreases; and (3) an increase in the overall perceived utility of an innovation caused a corresponding increase in induced p and q values. Understanding micro to macro linkages can inform the design and assessment of marketing interventions on microvariables ‒ or processes related to them ‒ to enhance adoption of future products or technologies.
FameLab, National Geographic’s science communication competition, stops at WUSTL Saturday	2014-02-21	Washington University St. Louis	CRED in the News
Feedback mechanisms between water availability and water use in a semi-arid river basin: A spatially explicit multi-agent simulation approach	2010-04-01	Van Oel, P., Krol, M., Hoekstra, A. & Taddei, R. \| Environmental Modelling & Software 25:433-43	Publications	Abstract: Understanding the processes responsible for the distribution of water availability over space and time is of great importance to spatial planning in a semi-arid river basin. In this study the usefulness of a multi-agent simulation (MAS) approach for representing these processes is discussed. A MAS model has been developed to represent local water use of farmers that both respond to and modify the spatial and temporal distribution of water resources in a river basin. The MAS approach is tested for the Jaguaribe basin in semi-arid Northeast Brazil. Model validity and required data for representing system dynamics are discussed. For the Jaguaribe basin both positive and negative correlations between water availability and water use have been encountered. It was found that increasing wet season water use in times of drought amplify water stress in the following dry season. It is concluded that with our approach it is possible to validly represent spatial-temporal variability of water availability that is influenced by water use and vice versa.10.1016/j.envsoft.2009.10.018
Fielding Climate Change in Cultural Anthropology	2009-01-01	Roncoli, C., Crane, T., & Orlove, B. \| In S. Crate and M. Nuttall (Eds.), Anthropology and Climate Change: from Encounters to Action (pp. 87-115). Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press	Publications	Introduction: Global climate change has become an increasingly visible topic in public culture over the past few decades, and will likely dominate environmental, political, and social agendas for some time to come. Only in the last few years has a critical mass of anthropologists begun to focus on the social practices and cultural implications surrounding the production of climate change models and scenarios, the communication and interpretation of climate information, climate change causes and solutions, and the implications of its impacts for people worldwide. ISBN 978-1-59874-334-0
Fighting, Unruliness Hinder Hurricane Sandy Recovery In New York, New Jersey	2012-11-02	Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Flood Zone Foolishness	2014-03-23	Scott Gabriel Knowles \| Slate	CRED in the News
Florida Global Warming Survey	2008-01-01	Leiserowitz, A. & Broad, K. \| Project Report	Publications, Reports	Abstract: The issue of climate change is increasingly being discussed in the media and within political circles. Around the globe actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being taken at all levels of government. Florida is consistently identiﬁed as one of the regions most vulnerable to climate change due to its extensive urban development in low lying areas, the economic importance of tourism and agriculture, unique ecosystems and reliance on groundwater for human consumption. Only relatively recently have legislators proposed changes aimed at both reducing the production of greenhouse gases in Florida and promoting proactive measures to reduce vulnerability to what experts believe will be the inevitable impacts. The goal of this study is to measure the perceptions of Florida residents about the causes and consequences of climate change, and about potential solutions. The main ﬁndings are presented here and are intended to aid policymakers, educators, the private sector and environmental organizations in their planning efforts in response to climate change.
Florida Officials Banned the Term 'Climate Change'	2015-03-09	Laura Dattaro \| Vice News	CRED in the News
Flushed Away: Saving Water at Home	2014-03-10	KNPR (Las Vegas, NV)	CRED in the News
For Climate Scientists, There Is No Flying Under the Radar	2015-08-13	Jeremy Deaton \| Climate Nexus	CRED in the News
For This Green Smoothie, the First Ingredient Is Frog	2016-05-20	Evan Gershkovich \| New York Times	CRED in the News
Forecast Skill and Farmers’ Skills: Seasonal Climate Forecasts and Agricultural Risk Management in the Southeastern United States	2010-01-01	Crane, T.A., Roncoli, C., Paz, J., Breuer, N., Broad K., Ingram, K.T., & Hoogenboom, G. \| Weather, Climate, and Society, 2, 44-59.	Publications	Abstract: During the last 10 yr, research on seasonal climate forecasts as an agricultural risk management tool has pursued three directions: modeling potential impacts and responses, identifying opportunities and constraints, and analyzing risk communication aspects. Most of these approaches tend to frame seasonal climate forecasts as a discrete product with direct and linear effects. In contrast, the authors propose that agricultural management is a performative process, constituted by a combination of planning, experimentation, and improvisation and drawing on a mix of technical expertise, situated knowledge, cumulative experience, and intuitive skill as farmers navigate a myriad of risks in the pursuit of livelihood goals and economic opportunities. This study draws on ethnographic interviews conducted with 38 family farmers in southern Georgia, examining their livelihood goals and social values, strategies for managing risk, and interactions with weather and climate information, specifically their responses to seasonal climate forecasts. Findings highlight the social nature of information processing and risk management, indicating that both material conditions and value-based attitudes bear upon the ways farmers may integrate climate predictions into their agricultural management practices. These insights translate into specific recommendations that will enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of seasonal climate forecasts among farmers and will promote the incorporation of such information into a skillful performance in the face of climate uncertainty. 10.1175/2009WCAS1006.1
Forecasting Andean rainfall from the influence of El Niño on Pleiades visibility	2011-08-22	EarthSky (in Spanish)	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Co-Director, Ben Orlove
Forget About Saving Energy. This Is About Saving Lives	2015-08-24	Jeremy Deaton \| Nexus Media	CRED in the News
Framing Science- Featuring the CRED Guide	2009-11-09	Framing Science Blog	CRED in the News
Freezing Out the Bigger Picture	2014-02-10	New York Times	CRED in the News
From accessing to assessing forecasts: an end-to-end study of participatory climate forecast dissemination in Burkina Faso (West Africa).	2008-07-18	Roncoli, C., Jost, C., Kirshen, P., Sanon, M., Ingram, K.T., Woodin, M., Somé, L., Ouattara, F., Bienvenue, S.J., Sia, C., Yaka, P., & Hoogenboom, G. \| Climatic Change, 92, 433-460	Publications	Abstract: This study compares responses to seasonal climate forecasts conducted by farmers of three agro-ecological zones of Burkina Faso, including some who had attended local level workshops and others who had not attended the workshops. While local inequalities and social tensions contributed to excluding some groups, about two-thirds of non-participants interviewed received the forecast from the participants or through various means deployed by the project. Interviews revealed that almost all those who received the forecasts by some mechanism (workshop or other) shared them with others. The data show that participants were more likely to understand the probabilistic aspect of the forecasts and their limitations, to use the information in making management decisions and by a wider range of responses. These differences are shown to be statistically signiﬁcant. Farmers evaluated the forecasts as accurate and useful in terms of both material and non-material considerations. These ﬁndings support the hypothesis that participatory workshops can play a positive role in the provision of effective climate services to African rural producers. However, this role must be assessed in the context of local dynamics of power, which shape information ﬂows and response options. Participation must also be understood beyond single events (such as workshops) and be grounded in sustained interaction and commitments among stakeholders. The conclusion of this study point to lessons learned and critical insights on the role of participation in climate-based decision support systems for rural African communities. 10.1007/s10584-008-9445-6
From individual preference construction to group decisions: Framing effects and group processes.	2009-01-13	Milch, K. F., Weber, E. U., Appelt, K. C., Handgraaf, M. J. J., & Krantz, D. H. \| Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 108(2), 242-255.	Publications	Abstract: Two choice tasks known to produce framing effects in individual decisions were used to test group sensitivity to framing, relative to that of individuals, and to examine the effect of prior, individual consideration of a decision on group choice. Written post-decision reasons and pre-decision group discussions were analyzed to investigate process explanations of choices made by preexisting, naturalistic groups. For a risky choice problem, a similar framing effect was observed for groups and individuals. For an intertemporal choice task where consumption was either delayed or accelerated, naïve groups (whose members had not preconsidered the decision) showed a framing effect, less discounting in the delay frame, opposite to that observed in individuals. Predecided groups showed a non-signiﬁcant effect in the other, expected direction. In all cases, process measures better explained variability in choices across conditions than frame alone. Implications for group decision research and design considerations for committee decisions are addressed. 10.1016/j.obhdp.2008.11.003
From intuition to analysis: Making decisions with our head, our heart, or by the book.		Weber, E. U., & Lindemann, P. G. \| In H. Plessner, C. Betsch, & T. Betsch (Eds.), Intuition in Judgment and Decision Making (pp. 191-208). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum	Publications	Introduction: The seemingly effortless, intuitive judgments and decisions made by experts—be they museum curators, stock traders, or chess grand masters—continue to fascinate both academia (eg, Hogarth, 2001) and the popularimagination (Gladwell, 2005). In this chapter, we propose that expert intuitionrefers to processes to which the decision maker does not have conscious accesseither because previously conscious, analytic processes have become automated toa point in which conscious attention is no longer necessary (Goldberg, 2005) or asthe result of cumulative, associative learning that has never been conscious (eg,Plessner, Betsch, Schallies, & Schwieren, chap. 7, this volume). We also argue thatnonexpert intuitive decision making is carried out in related ways. ISBN: 0805857419
From Management to Negotiation: Technical and Institutional Innovations for Integrated Water Resource Management in the Upper Comoé River Basin, Burkina Faso.	2009-08-26	Roncoli, C., Kirshen, P., Etkin, D., Sanon, M., Somé, L., Dembélé, Y., Bienvenu, S.J.., Zoungrana, J., Hoogenboom, G. \| Environmental Management, 44, 695-711	Publications	Abstract: This study focuses on the potential role of technical and institutional innovations for improving water management in a multi-user context in Burkina Faso. We focus on a system centered on three reservoirs that capture the waters of the Upper Comoé River Basin and servicing a diversity of users, including a sugar manufacturing company, a urban water supply utility, a farmer cooperative, and other downstream users. Due to variable and declining rainfall and expanding users’ needs, drastic fluctuations in water supply and demand occur during each dry season. A decision support tool was developed through participatory research to enable users to assess the impact of alternative release and diversion schedules on deficits faced by each user. The tool is meant to be applied in the context of consultative planning by a local user committee that has been created by a new national integrated water management policy. We contend that both solid science and good governance are instrumental in realizing efficient and equitable water management and adaptation to climate variability and change. But, while modeling tools and negotiation platforms may assist users in managing climate risk, they also introduce additional uncertainties into the deliberative process. It is therefore imperative to understand how these technological and institutional innovations frame water use issues and decisions to ensure that such framing is consistent with the goals of integrated water resource management.
From Nepal quake, lessons for the U.S.	2015-04-27	Michael Useem, Howard Kunreuther, Erwann Michel-Kerjan \| Philadelphia Inquirer	CRED in the News
Getting a Whiff of Climate Change	2014-04-09	Ben Orlove \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Getting Better Prepared for the Next Big Storm	2012-11-12	State of the Planet: Earth Institute Blog	CRED in the News
Glacier Retreat: Reviewing the Limits of Human Adaptation to Climate Change	2009-05-26	Environment	CRED in the News	Article by CRED Co-Director Ben Orlove
Glacier retreat: Reviewing the limits of human adaptation to climate change.	2010-08-07	Orlove, B.S. \| Environment, 51(3), 2	Publications	Introduction: T he world’s mountains bear many glaciers, somewhere between 150,000 and 200,000 by current estimates. Nearly all are shrinking. As temperatures increase, the massive banks of ice on mountain summits melt much faster than they did in the past. The fresh snows that fall each year cannot make up for this loss, and the glaciers retreat upslope and grow smaller. A recent review of glaciers around the world shows that the average loss of length is about 10 meters (m) per year, and this pace is accelerating in many regions (see Figure 1 below). 10.3200/ENVT.51.3.22-34
Glaciers and society: attributions, perceptions, and valuations	2014-11-01	Gagné, K., Rasmussen, M.B., Orlove, B. \| WIREs Climate Change, 5 (6): pp 793-808	Publications	Abstract: As icons of a world set in motion by human action, glaciers are often highlighted as quintessential evidences of global climate change. Although there is a general agreement among scientists that glaciers around the world are receding, much of the discussions on the subject tend to be oriented toward technological methodologies. Yet, as elements of the landscape, glaciers are strongly integrated to various societies around the world in ways that exceed their role as provider of fundamental sources of water. The relation between glaciers and societies is therefore marked by processes of attribution, perception, and valuation by local and distant actors. As a consequence, as they recede, glaciers often become the loci of interactions between actors of various scales. But besides melting, glaciers also transform from being objects of local to national and global concern. This is particularly true when esthetic and economic values are assigned to glaciers. Real and perceived changes in the form, reach and out-flow of water impact the local populations, and shape the kinds of action undertaken by communities, local actors, state authorities, and international organizations. The paper concludes by arguing that place-based research is fundamental to discuss a global environmental phenomenon such as glacier recession. WIREs Clim Change 2014, 5:793–808. doi: 10.1002/wcc.315
Global perceptions of local temperature change	12-12-16	Howe, P.D., Markowitz, E.M., Lee, T.M., Ko, C.Y., & Leiserowitz, A. \| Nature Climate change, v. 2(12),	Publications
Global Warming and Changing Water Resources: Perceptions of Glacier Retreat in Mountain Regions.	2010-01-29	Brugger, J., Dunbar, K., Jurt, C., Orlove, B. \| Anthropology News, 51(2), 23-24.	Publications
Global Warming: It's All In Your Head	2007-02-22	CBS News	CRED in the News
Global warming? Public attitudes often at mercy of the weather, study finds.	2014-01-13	Christian Science Monitor	CRED in the News
Global warming? Public attitudes often at mercy of the weather, study finds.	2014-01-14	Alaska Dispatch via Christian Science Monitor	CRED in the News
Goals and Plans in Decision Making	2007-06-03	Krantz, D.H., & Kunreuther, H.C. \| Judgement and Decision Making, 2(3), 137-168.	Publications	Abstract: We propose a constructed-choice model for general decision making. The model departs from utility theory and prospect theory in its treatment of multiple goals and it suggests several different ways in which context can affect choice. It is particularly instructive to apply this model to protective decisions, which are often puzzling. Among other anomalies, people insure against non-catastrophic events, underinsure against catastrophic risks, and allow extraneous factors to influence insurance purchases and other protective decisions. Neither expected-utility theory nor prospect theory can explain these anomalies satisfactorily. To apply this model to the above anomalies, we consider many different insurance-related goals, organized in a taxonomy, and we consider the effects of context on goals, resources, plans and decision rules. The paper concludes by suggesting some prescriptions for improving individual decision making with respect to protective measures.
Good or bad, we want it now: Present bias for gains and losses explains magnitude asymmetries in intertemporal choice	2012-07-13	Hardisty, D. J., Appelt, K. C., & Weber, E. U. \| Journal of Behavioral Decision Making.	Publications	Abstract: Intertemporal tradeoffs are ubiquitous in decision making, yet preferences for current versus future losses are rarely explored in empirical research. Whereas rational-economic theory posits that neither outcome sign (gains vs. losses) nor outcome magnitude (small vs. large) should affect delay discount rates, both do, and moreover, they interact: in three studies, we show that whereas large gains are discounted less than small gains, large losses are discounted more than small losses. This interaction can be understood through a reconceptualization of fixed-cost present bias, which has traditionally described a psychological preference for immediate rewards. First, our results establish present bias for losses—a psychological preference to have losses over with now. Present bias thus predicts increased discounting of future gains but decreased (or even negative) discounting of future losses. Second, because present bias preferences do not scale with the magnitude of possible gains or losses, they play a larger role, relative to other motivations for discounting, for small magnitude intertemporal decisions than for large magnitude intertemporal decisions. Present bias thus predicts less discounting of large gains than small gains but more discounting of large losses than small losses. The present research is the first to demonstrate that the effect of outcome magnitude on discount rates may be opposite for gains and losses and also the first to offer a theory (an extension of present bias) and process data to explain this interaction. The results suggest that policy efforts to encourage future-oriented choices should frame outcomes as large gains or small losses. 10.1002/bdm.1771
Green and Clueless	2010-08-17	Newsweek	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Green machine: Fighting the efficiency fallacies	2010-08-17	New Scientist	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Group cognition: Collective information search and distribution	2013-08-22	Levine, J. M., and Smith, E. (2013) \| In D. Carlston (Ed.), Oxford handbook of social cognition. New York: Oxford University Press, Ch. 30 pp. 616-633.	Publications
Group Cooperation Under Uncertainty	2009-10-15	Gong, M., Baron, J. and Kunreuther, H. \| Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 39 (3): 251-270	Publications	Abstract: Previous research has shown an ‘interindividual-intergroup discontinuity effect’: intergroup interactions generally lead to less cooperative outcomes than interindividual interactions. We replicate the discontinuity effect in the deterministic prisoner’s dilemma, but find that groups are more cooperative than individuals in a stochastic version of the game. Three major factors that underlie the usual discontinuity effect are reduced in the stochastic environment: greed, fear, and persuasion power. Two group mechanisms are proposed to explain the reversed discontinuity effect: the motivation to avoid guilt and blame when making decisions that affect others’ welfare, and the social pressure to conform to certain norms when one is in a group setting.10.1007/s11166-009-9080-2
He Was a Fine Man—He Recycled	2015-01-07	Tom Jacobs \| Pacific Standard Magazine	CRED in the News
Helping Consumers See the Green Behind Fuel Economy	2014-03-11	State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Here's the secret to making people care about climate change	2016-01-04	Ezra Markowitz & Lisa Zaval \| Washington Post	CRED in the News
Hot Heads in Cold Weather	2014-02-07	Maria Konnikova \| New Yorker	CRED in the News
How Can Psychologists Help Make Earth Day Every Day?	2013-04-19	American Psychological Association	CRED in the News
How grammatical tweaks can radically alter support for public policies	2014-11-04	Tom Jacobs \| The Week	CRED in the News
How Miami Beach Is Keeping the Florida Dream Alive--And Dry	2016-03-14	Sara Solovitch \| Politico Magazine	CRED in the News
How Much Energy Does that Device Use?	2010-09-23	Climate Central	CRED in the News	Press featuring published research by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
How psychology can help the planet stay cool	2009-08-19	New Scientist	CRED in the News
How to Laugh at Climate Change	2014-05-16	Michelle Nijhuis \| The New Yorker	CRED in the News
How to measure discount rates? An experimental comparison of three methods	2013-05-01	Hardisty, D. J., Thompson, K., Krantz, D. H., & Weber, E. U. \| Judgment and Decision Making, 8(3), 236-249	Publications	Abstract: In two studies, time preferences for ﬁnancial gains and losses at delays of up to 50 years were elicited using three different methods: matching, ﬁxed-sequence choice titration, and a dynamic “staircase” choice method. Matching was found to create fewer demand characteristics and to produce better ﬁts with the hyperbolic model of discounting. The choice-based measures better predicted real-world outcomes such as smoking and payment of credit card debt. No consistent advantages were found for the dynamic staircase method over ﬁxed-sequence titration.
How warm days increase belief in global warming	2014-01-12	Zaval., L., Keenan, Elizabeth A., Johnson, Eric. J., Weber, Elke. U. \| Nature Climate Change	Publications	Abstract: Climate change judgements can depend on whether today seems warmer or colder than usual, termed the local warming effect. Although previous research has demonstrated that this effect occurs, studies have yet to explain why or how temperature abnormalities influence global warming attitudes. A better understanding of the underlying psychology of this effect can help explain the public’s reaction to climate change and inform approaches used to communicate the phenomenon. Across five studies, we find evidence of attribute substitution, whereby individuals use less relevant but available information (for example, today’s temperature) in place of more diagnostic but less accessible information (for example, global climate change patterns) when making judgements. Moreover, we rule out alternative hypotheses involving climate change labelling and lay mental models. Ultimately, we show that present temperature abnormalities are given undue weight and lead to an overestimation of the frequency of similar past events, thereby increasing belief in and concern for global warming.
How Weather Messes With Our Global Warming Opinions	2014-01-12	Discovery News	CRED in the News
How weather shapes our climate ideas	2014-01-13	Eco-Business	CRED in the News
How weather shapes our climate ideas	2014-01-12	Alex Kirby \| Climate News Network	CRED in the News
How Will I Be Remembered? Conserving the Environment for the Sake of One’s Legacy	2015-01-05	Zaval, L., Markowitz, E.M., Weber, E.U. 2015. \| Psychological Science .	Publications	Abstract: Long time horizons and social distance are viewed as key psychological barriers to proenvironmental action, particularly regarding climate change. We suggest that these challenges can be turned into opportunities by making salient long-term goals and motives, thus shifting preferences between the present self and future others. We tested whether individuals’ motivation to leave a positive legacy can be leveraged to increase engagement with climate change and other environmental problems. In a pilot study, we found that individual differences in legacy motivation were positively associated with proenvironmental behaviors and intentions. In a subsequent experiment, we demonstrated that priming legacy motives increased donations to an environmental charity, proenvironmental intentions, and climate-change beliefs. Domain-general legacy motives represent a previously understudied and powerful mechanism for promoting proenvironmental behavior.
Human Nature and Creeping Environmental Threats	2013-10-21	Union of Concerned Scientists, Kenny Broad	CRED in the News
Humans don’t do ‘future’ well, and that could doom us if we’re not careful	2014-09-23	Richard Schiffman \| Reuters	CRED in the News
Hurricane Sandy Hasn’t Shifted Climate Narrative	2013-10-29	Climate Central	CRED in the News
Hurricane Sandy Hints at Perils of Global Catastrophe	2012-11-08	Scientific American	CRED in the News
Hurricane Sandy: A disaster foretold?	2012-10-30	PBS's Need to Know	CRED in the News
Hurricanes With Female Names Kill More People, Study Claims	2014-06-02	Andrew Freedman \| Mashable	CRED in the News
Hyperbolically discount our environment	2012-11-29	Weber and Hardisty cited in "Mydigitalfc" Op-Ed	CRED in the News
Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano, which sits under a glacier, is showing signs of an impending explosive eruption	2014-08-20	news.com.au	CRED in the News
Immediate weather appears to drive beliefs about climate change -- study	2014-01-13	ClimateWire	CRED in the News
In Hurricane Forecasts, “Cone of Uncertainty” Is Surrounded by Haze of Confusion	2012-08-28	Slate	CRED in the News
Inclusion and exclusion: Implications for group processes.	2007	Levine, J. M., & Kerr, N. L. \| In A.W. Kruglanski & E.T. Higgins (Eds.) Social Psychology, Second Edition: Handbook of Basic Principles(pp.759-784). New York: Guilford.	Publications
Index insurance and climate risk: Prospects for development and disaster management.	2009-01-01	Hellmuth M.E., Osgood D.E., Hess U., Moorhead A. and Bhojwani H. (eds) \| Climate and Society No. 2. International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), Columbia University, New York, USA	Publications
Index insurance and climate risk: Prospects for development and disaster management. (Annex)	2010-10-01	Hellmuth M.E., Osgood D.E., Hess U., Moorhead A. and Bhojwani H. (eds) \| Climate and Society No. 2. International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), Columbia University, New York, USA.	Publications
Index Insurance for Managing Climate-Related Agricultural Risk: Toward a Strategic Research Agenda Workshop Report.	2011-12-01	De Nicola, F., Vargas Hill, R., Carter, M., Choularton, R., Hansen, J., & Osgood, D. \| International Food Policy Research Institute Report, Washington DC, IFPRI.	Publications	Summary: In October 2011, the CGIAR program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the Index Insurance Innovation Initiative (I4) organized a joint workshop hosted by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The workshop was designed to identify and address issues surrounding index‐based insurance for smallholder farmers and the rural poor in the developing world. Emphasis was placed on identifying key areas of research and learning for the academic and policy community to pursue. The workshop took as its starting point the idea that there is large potential in using indices to insure smallholder farmers. However, in practice, the costs of providing and scaling up index insurance have not been insubstantial. In view of this potential and these constraints, workshop participants identified key areas of research and learning aimed at increasing the benefits of index‐based insurance to smallholder farmers and the rural poor in the developing world. This report summarizes the findings of the two‐day workshop. Publisher's page
Index insurance games in Adi Ha Tabia, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia.	2009-01-01	Peterson, N., & Mullally, C. \| Report to Oxfam America, Boston, USA (published in print)	Publications, Reports
Index Insurance Takes Root as Climate Change Stings Agriculture	2014-10-21	Katie Gilbert \| Institutional Investor	CRED in the News
Index Insurance, Production Practices, and Probabilistic Climate Forecasts.	2012-03-01	Carriquiri, M., and Osgood, D. \| Journal of Risk and Insurance, 79(1), 287-300.	Publications	Abstract: Index insurance and probabilistic seasonal forecasts are becoming available in developing countries to help farmers manage climate risks in production. Although these tools are intimately related, work has not been done to formalize the connections between them. We investigate the relationship between the tools through a model of input choice under uncertainty, forecasts, and insurance. While it is possible for forecasts to undermine insurance, we find that when contracts are appropriately designed, there are important synergies between forecasts, insurance, and effective input use. Used together, these tools overcome barriers preventing the use of imperfect information in production decision making. 10.1111/j.1539-6975.2011.01422.x
Indiana University research: We want to save water, but do we know how?	2014-03-03	Indiana University Bloomington Newsroom	CRED in the News
Indigenous climate knowledge in Southern Uganda: the multiple components of a dynamic regional system.	2009-04-23	Orlove, B.S., Roncoli, C., Kabugo, M., & Majugu, A. \| Climatic Change: Special Issue on Indigenous Knowledge, 100:243–265.	Publications	Abstract: Farmers in southern Uganda seek information to anticipate the interannual variability in the timing and amount of precipitation, a matter of great importance to them since they rely on rain-fed agriculture for food supplies and income. The four major components of their knowledge system are: (1) longstanding familiarity with the seasonal patterns of precipitation and temperature, (2) a set of local traditional climate indicators, (3) observation of meteorological events, (4) information about the progress of the seasons elsewhere in the region. We examine these components and show the connections among them. We discuss the social contexts in which this information is perceived, evaluated, discussed and applied, and we consider the cultural frameworks that support the use of this information. This system of indigenous knowledge leads farmers to participate as agents as well as consumers in programs that use modern climate science to plan for and adapt to climate variability and climate change. 10.1007/s10584-009-9586-2
Individual values and social goals in environmental decision making.	2008-01-01	Krantz, D.H., Peterson, N., Arora, P., Milch, K. & Orlove, B. \| In Kugler, T., Smith, J.C., Connolly, T., & Son, Y.-J. (Eds.) Decision Modeling and Behavior in Uncertain and Complex Environments 21:165-198	Publications	978-0-387-77131-1
Insuring Future Climate Catastrophes		Kunreuther, H., Michel-Kerjan, E., Ranger, N. \| Climatic Change, 118 (2), 339-354	Publications	Abstract: The combined influences of a change in climate patterns and the increased concentration of property and economic activity in hazard-prone areas has the potential of restricting the availability and affordability of insurance. This paper evaluates the premiums that private insurers are likely to charge and their ability to cover residential losses against hurricane risk in Florida as a function of (a) recent projections on future hurricane activity in 2020 and 2040; (b) insurance market conditions (i.e., soft or hard market); (c) the availability of reinsurance; and (d) the adoption of adaptation measures (i.e., implementation of physical risk reduction measures to reduce wind damage to the structure and buildings). We find that uncertainties in climate projections translate into a divergent picture for insurance in Florida. Under dynamic climate models, the total price of insurance for Florida (assuming constant exposure) could increase significantly by 2040, from $12.9 billion (in 1990) to $14.2 billion, under hard market conditions. Under lower bound projections, premiums could decline to $9.4 billion by 2040. Taking a broader range of climate change scenarios, including several statistical ones, prices could be between $4.7 and $32.1 billion by 2040. The upper end of this range suggests that insurance could be unaffordable for many people in Florida. The adoption of most recent building codes for all residences in the state could reduce by nearly half the expected price of insurance so that even under high climate change scenarios, insurance premiums would be lower than under the 1990 baseline climate scenario. Under a full adaptation scenario, if insurers can obtain reinsurance, they will be able to cover 100 % of the loss if they allocated 10 % of their surplus to cover a 100-year return hurricane, and 63 % and 55 % of losses from a 250-year hurricane in 2020 and 2040. Property-level adaptation and the maintenance of strong and competitive reinsurance markets will thus be essential to maintain the affordability and availability of insurance in the new era of catastrophe risk.
Integrated Risk and Uncertainty Assessment of Climate Change Response Policies	2014-04-12	Kunreuther, H., Gupta, S., Bosetti, V., Cooke, R., Dutt, V., Ha‐Duong, M., Held,H., Llanes‐Regueiro, J., Patt, A., Shittu, E., Weber, E. \| Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Assessment Report 5, Working Group 3, Chapter 2	Publications
Interdisciplinary Production of Knowledge with Participation of Stakeholders: A Case Study of a Collaborative Project on Climate Variability, Human Decisions and Agricultural Ecosystems in the Argentine Pampas	2013-02-01	Podestá, G. P., C. E. Natenzon, C. Hidalgo and Fernando Ruiz Toranzo \| Environmental Science and Policy, (26), 40-48	Publications	Abstract: There is a growing perception that science is not responding adequately to the global challenges of the 21st century. Addressing complicated, ‘‘wicked’’ current and future environmental issues requires insights and methods from many disciplines. Furthermore, to reach social robustness in a context of uncertainty and multiple values and objectives, participation of relevant social actors is required. As a consequence, interdisciplinary research teams with stakeholder or practitioner involvement are becoming an emerging pattern for the organization of integrative scientiﬁc research or integrated assessments. Nevertheless, still there is need to learn from actual experiences that bring together decision makers and scholars from different disciplines.Thispaperdraws lessons from a self-reﬂective study of the collaborative process in two interdisciplinary, multi-institutional,multinational research teams addressing linkages between climate variability, human decisions and agricultural ecosystems in the Argentine Pampas. During project design, attention must be placed on team composition, ensuring not only that the needed talents are included, but also recruiting investigators with an open attitude toward interdisciplinary interaction. As the project begins, considerable effort must be dedicated to shared problem deﬁnition and development of a common language. Simple conceptual models and considerable redundancy in communication are helpful. As a project evolves, diverging institutiona lincentives, tensions between academic publication and outreach or policy-relevant outputs, disciplinary biases, and personality issues play increasingly important roles. Finally,toward a project’s end the challenge arises of assessing interdisciplinary, integrative work. The lack of consensus on criteria for assessment of results is often ranked as a major practical difﬁculty of this kind of research. Despite many efforts to describe and characterize collaborative research on complex problems, conditions for success (including the very deﬁnition of‘‘success’’) remain to be rigorously grounded on actual cases. Toward this goal, we argue that a self-reﬂective process to identify and intervene on factors that foster or impede cooperative production of knowledge should be an essential component of integrated assessments involving scientists, practitioners and stakeholders.
Interview Effects in an Environmental Valuation Telephone Survey	2011-01-01	Gong, M. and Aadland, D. \| Environmental and Resource Economics, 49(1): 47-67	Publications	Abstract: Because of the lack of markets for many environmental services, economists have turned to valuation surveys to estimate the value of these services. However, lack of market experience may cause respondents in valuation surveys to be more prone to interview effects than they would be with other opinion surveys. Without reference to market price or experience, respondents are less likely to have well-defined preferences, which may cause respondents to be more easily influenced by the interview process and characteristics of the interviewer. In this paper, we investigate interview effects in a random digit dial telephone survey of recycling valuation and behavior. Following previous research in both psychology and survey methodology, we test the direct effects of interviewer gender and race, as well as the interaction effects between interviewer and respondent characteristics. Using data from 130 interviewers and 1,786 interviewees, we apply a hierarchical regression model that accounts for the clustering of interviews and controls for a variety of other confounding variables. We confirm the existence of both direct and conditional interviewer effects. Respondents state higher willingness to pay when interviewed by white or female interviewers than by non-white or male interviewers. There were also significant interaction effects between interviewer and respondent characteristics. The directions of the interviewer effects are consistent with previous survey research and social psychology theories. We also identify some non-traditional interview process factors that have an influence on survey responses. 10.1007/s10640-010-9423-0
Interview: Climate Change in Central Asia	2015-07-23	Ryskeldi Satke \| The Diplomat	CRED in the News
Introduction to symposium on rethinking farmer participation in agricultural development: development, participation, and the ethnography of ambiguity	2010-12-25	Glenzer, K., N. Peterson, C. Roncoli \| Agriculture and Human Values, 28:97–98.	Publications	Introduction: The topic of participation is not new to efforts to improve agricultural livelihoods and natural resource management in developing countries. Viewed as a means to encourage more democratic decision making and increase ownership and sustainability of development interventions, participation has many advocates as well as critics (see, for example, Cooke and Kothari 2001; Hickey and Mohan 2005; Moore 2000; Peters 2000; Pottier 1997). Proponents argue that a wide range of beneﬁts results from participation, such as improved understanding, ‘‘better’’ decisions in terms of efﬁciency or quality, greater equity, conﬂict mitigation, and sustainability (Michener 1998; Brody et al. 2003). The papers in this symposium offer an additional set of perspectives, in the hope of establishing a deeper understanding of what inﬂuences participation and how, in turn, this affects who participates, how they participate, and what the outcomes may be. The authors employ a diverse set of methods to explore the multiple ways that participation is subject to manipulation and interpretation, examining microanalyses of behavior within their larger political, economic, and linguistic contexts. 10.1007/s10460-010-9305-7
Investigating ENSO and society relationships	2014-06-24	Hansen, J., Lustig, A., Muñoz, A., Orlove, B., Thomson, M.C., Troy, T., Vaughan, C., Zebiak, S.E. \| WIREs Climate Change	Publications	Abstract: Throughout at least the past several centuries, El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has played a significant role in human response to climate. Over time, increased attention on ENSO has led to a better understanding of both the physical mechanisms, and the environmental and societal consequences of the phenomenon. The prospects for seasonal climate forecasting emerged from ENSO studies, and were first pursued in ENSO studies. In this paper, we review ENSO's impact on society, specifically with regard to agriculture, water, and health; we also explore the extent to which ENSO-related forecasts are used to inform decision making in these sectors. We find that there are significant differences in the uptake of forecasts across sectors, with the highest use in agriculture, intermediate use in water resources management, and the lowest in health. Forecast use is low in areas where ENSO linkages to climate are weak, but the strength of this linkage alone does not guarantee use. Moreover, the differential use of ENSO forecasts by sector shows the critical role of institutions that work at the boundary between science and society. In a long-term iterative process requiring continual maintenance, these organizations serve to enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of forecasts and related climate services.
Is "legacy" the key to climate action?	2016-01-05	Heather Smith \| Grist	CRED in the News
Is It Hot in Here or Is It Just Me Telling You It's Hot in Here?	2014-01-22	Bloomberg Sustainability	CRED in the News
It's Only a Matter of Time: Death Legacies, and Intergenerational Decisions	2012-06-12	Wade-Benzoni, K.A., Tost, L.A., Hernandez, M. and Larrick, R.P. \| Psychological Science, 20(10), 1-6	Publications	Abstract: Intergenerational decisions affect other people in the future. The combination of intertemporal and interpersonal distance between decision makers in the present and other people in the future may lead one to expect little intergenerational generosity. In the experiments reported here, however, we posited that the negative effect of intertemporal distance on intergenerational beneficence would be reversed when people were primed with thoughts of death. This reversal would occur because death priming leads individuals to be concerned with having a lasting impact on other people in the future. Our experiments show that when individuals are exposed to death priming, the expected tendency to allocate fewer resources to others in the future, as compared with others in the present, is reversed. Our findings suggest that legacy motivations triggered by death priming can trump intergenerational discounting tendencies and promote intergenerational beneficence.
It's up to social science to make us act in an environmentally conscious way. But can we trick ourselves into saving ourselves?	2009-04-22	Seed Magazine	CRED in the News
Katherine Thompson wins Outstanding Student Paper Award at American Geophysical Union Meeting	2014-01-10	American Geophysical Union	CRED in the News
Kenny Broad on Charlie Brennan Show	2014-02-20	KMOX St. Louis	CRED in the News
Largest Weather Index Insurance Payout for Small Scale African Farmers Triggered by Satellite Technology	2012-06-12	OXFAM America	CRED in the News
LARS JAN’S HOLOSCENES PROJECT	2014-12-09	Erin McKinnon \| Green Light Sustainability Advisors	CRED in the News
Leaving a Green Legacy	2015-01-15	Roberta Kwok \| Conservation Magazine	CRED in the News
Legacy in Mind: Why We Bother to Save the Planet	2012-06-19	The Huffington Post	CRED in the News	CRED Principal Investigator Rick Larrick and colleagues at the Duke Fuqua School of Business co-authored the study cited in this article.
Lessons from a comprehensive validation of an agent based-model: The experience of the Pampas Model of Argentinean agricultural systems	2013-12-13	Bert, F.E., Rovere, S.L., Macal, C.M., North, M.J. and Podestá, G.P \| Ecological Modeling	Publications
Lessons from the Field: Lasting Impact of Extreme Weather Events on Climate Engagement	2013-10-25	Climate Access	CRED in the News
Lessons from the field: Takeaways from 2013 and the challenges that lie ahead	2013-12-06	Climate Access	CRED in the News
Lessons from the Nepal Earthquake	2015-04-29	Knowledge at Wharton	CRED in the News
Linking Climate, Security and Development to Fragility in Haiti	2014-12-11	Alex Fischer \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Local Warming: Daily Temperature Change Influences Belief in Global Warming	2011-04-01	Li, Y., Johnson, E., Zaval, L. \| Psychological Science, 22(4):454-459	Publications	Abstract: Although people are quite aware of global warming, their beliefs about it may be malleable; specifically, their beliefs may be constructed in response to questions about global warming. Beliefs may reflect irrelevant but salient information, such as the current day’s temperature. This replacement of a more complex, less easily accessed judgment with a simple, more accessible one is known as attribute substitution. In three studies, we asked residents of the United States and Australia to report their opinions about global warming and whether the temperature on the day of the study was warmer or cooler than usual. Respondents who thought that day was warmer than usual believed more in and had greater concern about global warming than did respondents who thought that day was colder than usual. They also donated more money to a global-warming charity if they thought that day seemed warmer than usual. We used instrumental variable regression to rule out some alternative explanations. 10.1177/0956797611400913
Maintain the best features of Biggert-Waters	2014-03-06	Howard Kunreuther & Erwann Michel-Kerjan \| The Hill	CRED in the News
Major League Baseball Copes With Climate Change	2012-08-16	The Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Making Green Behavior Automatic	2013-05-23	Renee Cho, State of the Planet Blog, Earth Institute	CRED in the News
Making Our Mark: Contemplating our legacy and climate change action	2015-04-22	Michele Wick \| Psychology Today	CRED in the News
Making the Invisible Visible: The Psychology of Energy Use	2013-01-04	Indiana Living Green	CRED in the News
Managing Catastrophic Risk	2013-03-01	Kunreuther, H. and Heal, G. \| Encyclopedia of Energy, Natural Resources and Environmental Economics, Elsevier, March 2013, 52-59	Publications	Abstract: A principal reason that losses from catastrophic risks have been increasing over time is that more individuals and firms are locating in harm’s way while not taking appropriate protective measures. Several behavioural biases lead decision-makers not to invest in adaptation measures until after it is too late. In an interdependent world with no intervention by the public sector, it may be economically rational for those at risk not to invest in protective measures. Risk management strategies that involve private-public partnerships are thus crucial for addressing these issues and reducing future catastrophic losses. These may include multi-year insurance contracts, well-enforced regulations, third-party inspections, and alternative risk transfer instruments such as catastrophe bonds.
Managing Small-Scale Commercial Fisheries for Adaptive Capacity: Insights from Dynamic Social-Ecological Drivers of Change in Monterey Bay	2015-03-19	Aguilera, S.E., Cole, J., Finkbeiner, E.M., Le Cornu, E., Ban, N.C., Carr, M.H., Cinner, J.E., Crowder, L.B., Gelcich, S., Hicks, C.C., Kittenger, J.N., Martone, R., Malone, D., Pomeroy, C., Starr, R.M., Seram, S., Zuercher, R., Broad, K. \| PLOS One, 1-22	Publications	Abstract: Globally, small-scale fisheries are influenced by dynamic climate, governance, and market drivers, which present social and ecological challenges and opportunities. It is difficult to manage fisheries adaptively for fluctuating drivers, except to allow participants to shift effort among multiple fisheries. Adapting to changing conditions allows small-scale fishery participants to survive economic and environmental disturbances and benefit from optimal conditions. This study explores the relative influence of large-scale drivers on shifts in effort and outcomes among three closely linked fisheries in Monterey Bay since the Magnuson-Stevens Fisheries Conservation and Management Act of 1976. In this region, Pacific sardine (Sardinops sagax), northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax), and market squid (Loligo opalescens) fisheries comprise a tightly linked system where shifting focus among fisheries is a key element to adaptive capacity and reduced social and ecological vulnerability. Using a cluster analysis of landings, we identify four modes from 1974 to 2012 that are dominated (i.e., a given species accounting for the plurality of landings) by squid, sardine, anchovy, or lack any dominance, and seven points of transition among these periods. This approach enables us to determine which drivers are associated with each mode and each transition. Overall, we show that market and climate drivers are predominantly attributed to dominance transitions. Model selection of external drivers indicates that governance phases, reflected as perceived abundance, dictate long-term outcomes. Our findings suggest that globally, small-scale fishery managers should consider enabling shifts in effort among fisheries and retaining existing flexibility, as adaptive capacity is a critical determinant for social and ecological resilience.
Marcas de uma democratização diluída: modernidade, desigualdade e participação na gest ão de águas no Ceará	2011-01-01	Taddei, R., and Gamboggi, A. L. \| Revista de Ciências Sociais (UFC), Fortaleza, 42(2), 8-33.	Publications	Abstract: This article analyzes the results of a survey of 626 members of participatory water committees in Brazil. Contrasting the survey data with other quantitative and ethnographic data collected in the Jaguaribe Valley, state of Ceará, between 2003 and 2010, this paper suggests that the participatory governance of water resources in Brazil is going through a legitimacy crisis. The average profile of committee members reveal the socioeconomic gap between these individuals and the larger civil society, which should find in the committees a legitimate venue for political representation in water related disputes. Additionally, the article discusses the effects of the modernization discourse on the participation process, showing how new social identities are ascribed to local political players, with some being cast as not proper for responsible water management. The symbolic implications of modernization end up disarticulating the potential for the participation to be a process of effective social inclusion.
Matt Sisco Op-Ed: Time to get focused on climate change	2012-11-18	NJ Star-Ledger	CRED in the News
Measuring Social Value Orientation	2011-12-01	Murphy, R.O., Ackermann, K.A. and Handgraaf, M. \| Judgment and Decision Making 6(8):771-781.	Publications	Abstract: Narrow self-interest is often used as a simplifying assumption when studying people making decisions in social contexts. Nonetheless, people exhibit a wide range of different motivations when choosing unilaterally among interdependent outcomes. Measuring the magnitude of the concern people have for others, sometimes called Social Value Orientation (SVO), has been an interest of many social scientists for decades and several different measurement methods have been developed so far. Here we introduce a new measure of SVO that has several advantages over existent methods. A detailed description of the new measurement method is presented, along with norming data that provide evidence of its solid psychometric properties. We conclude with a brief discussion of the research streams that would beneﬁt from a more sensitive and higher resolution measure of SVO, and extend an invitation to others to use this new measure which is freely available. Publisher's page
Melting Glaciers Pose Threat Beyond Water Scarcity: Floods	2016-08-16	Mauricio Munoz \| ABC News	CRED in the News
Methane, Modern Science and the Dalai Lama	2011-10-25	State of the Planet	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Co-Director, Elke Weber
Metric and Scale Design as Choice Architecture Tools	2013-12-30	Camilleri, A. & Larrick, R. \| Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.	Publications	Abstract: Interest is increasing in using behavioral decision insights to design better product labels. A specific policy target is the fuel economy label, which policy makers can use to encourage reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from transport-related fossil-fuel combustion. In two online experiments, the authors examine whether vehicle preferences can be shifted toward more fuel-efficient vehicles by manipulating the metric (consumption of gas vs. cost of gas) and scale (100 miles vs. 15,000 miles vs. 100,000 miles) on which fuel economy information is expressed. They find that preference for fuel-efficient vehicles is highest when fuel economy is expressed in terms of the cost of gas over 100,000 miles, regardless of whether the vehicle pays for its higher price in gas savings. The authors discuss the underlying psychological mechanisms for this finding, including compatibility, anchoring, and familiarity effects, and conclude that policy makers should initiate programs that communicate fuel-efficiency information in terms of costs over an expanded, lifetime scale.
Microinsurance Demand Assessment in Adi Ha Tabia, Tigray Regional State, Ethiopia.	2008	Teshome, W., Peterson, N., Gebrekirstos, A. & Muniappan, K. \| Final Report to Oxfam America. Boston, USA. (published in print)	Publications
Milk, Bread, and Eggs: The Trinity of Winter-Storm Panic-Shopping	2016-01-22	Joe Pinsker \| The Atlantic	CRED in the News
Millions of poor farmers to benefit from new type of insurance - study	2015-01-29	Chris Arsenault \| Reuters	CRED in the News
Misinterpretations of the "Cone of Uncertainty" in Florida during the 2004 Hurricane Season.	2007-05-01	Broad, K., Leiserowitz, A., Weinkle, J. & Steketee, M. \| Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 88(5):651-657	Publications	Summary: Rigorous pretesting, including insights from social science, could improve hurricane forecast graphics aimed at the general public. 10.1175/BAMS-88-5-651
Misperceived Paths to Energy Savings	2010-08-17	The New York Times Dot Earth Blog	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Missing the Chance for Big Energy Savings: Focusing on Small Changes, Consumers Set Their Sights Low	2010-08-01	National Geographic	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Modeling Interdependent Risks	2007-06-01	Heal, G., & Kunreuther, H. \| Risk Analysis, 27(3), 621-634	Publications	Abstract: In an interdependent world the risks faced by any one agent depend not only on its choices but also on those of all others. Expectations about others’ choices will inﬂuence investments in risk management and the outcome can be suboptimal for everyone. We model this as the Nash equilibrium of a game and give conditions for such a suboptimal equilibrium to be tipped to an optimal one. We also characterize the smallest coalition to tip an equilibrium, the minimum critical coalition, and show that this is also the cheapest critical coalition, so that there is no less expensive way to move the system from the suboptimal to the optimal equilibrium. We illustrate these results by reference to airline security and the control of infectious diseases via vaccination.10.1111/j.1539-6924.2007.00904.x
Most Americans confused about daily water consumption	2014-03-04	News Track India	CRED in the News
Most Americans confused about daily water consumption	2014-03-04	Business Standard	CRED in the News
Most Americans confused about daily water consumption	2014-03-04	Malaysia Sun	CRED in the News
Most Americans confused about daily water consumption	2014-03-04	Toronto Telegraph	CRED in the News
Most Americans unaware about water conservation	2014-03-06	The Himalayan	CRED in the News
Motivating mitigation: when health matters more than climate change	2014-07-27	Petrovic, N., Madrigano, J., Zaval, L. \| Climatic Change 126, pp. 245–254	Publications
Motivation and Decision Science Seminar \| 24 March 2005	2005-03-24	Levine, J. (University of Pittsburgh) \| "Newcomers as Influence Sources in Groups"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
Motivation and Decision Science Seminar \| 31 March 2005	2005-03-31	Morgan, G. (Carnegie Mellon University) \| "Expert Elicitation of Probability"	2005 CRED Labs, CRED Lab
Musical Composition Conveys Climate Change Data	2015-05-21	JoAnna Wendel \| AGU Eos	CRED in the News
Naive Advice When Half a Million is at Stake	2008	Pogrebna, G. \| Economics Letters, 98(2), pp. 148-154	Publications	Abstract: In the television show Affari Tuoi contestants face decision problems with large monetary payoffs and have an opportunity to seek advice from the audience. It appears that this advice does not have a significant impact on the decisions of contestants. 10.1016/j.econlet.2007.04.024
NASA Warned New York About Hurricane Danger Six Years Ago	2012-10-30	Mother Jones	CRED in the News
National Difference in Environmental Concern and Performance Are Predicted by Country Age	2013-11-21	Hershfield, H., Bang, H.M., Weber, E.U. Psychological Science	Publications
National Flood Insurance Drowning in Red Ink	2014-03-24	David Caruso \| Hispanic Business	CRED in the News
National Geographic explorers hope to spark interest in adventure	2014-09-14	Haley Brundige \| UT Daily Beacon	CRED in the News
National Geographic explorers speak about science and adventure	2014-09-21	Julianna Burchett \| Tennessee Journalist	CRED in the News
National Geographic Explorers to Speak at Free Event at UT	2014-09-10	Tennessee Today	CRED in the News
National Geographic Weekend interviews Kenny Broad	2013-11-24	National Geographic	CRED in the News
Need to talk to a climate denier? Here’s how	2014-12-16	Mike Hower \| Green Biz	CRED in the News
New NSF-Funded Center for Research on Environmental Decisions	2004-11-01	Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP), Columbia University	CRED in the News
New simulation can help prepare people for hurricane damage	2012-11-26	The Daily Pennsylvanian	CRED in the News
New studies explore conscious and unconscious links between weather and climate change attitudes	2014-01-16	The Carbon Brief	CRED in the News
New York City Global Warming Survey	2008-01-01	Leiserowitz, A., Shome, D., Marx, S., Hammer, S., & Broad, K. \| Project Report	Publications, Reports
New Yorkers See a Threat in Global Warming	2008-03-06	The New York Times	CRED in the News
No easy fix on flood insurance, but options exist	2014-03-24	David Caruso \| Daily Comet	CRED in the News
No, Global Warming Isn't Suddenly a Myth Because It's Really Cold Out	2014-01-25	U.S. News & World Report	CRED in the News
Notas sobre a vida social da previsão climática – Um estudo do caso do Ceará.	2004	Taddei, R. \| In Lall, U. & Souza Filho, F.A. (Eds.) Gerenciamento Integrado dos Recursos Hídricos com Incorporação da Previsão Climática: da Informação e Previsão Climática à Redução das Vulnerabilidades às Secas no Semi-Árido Cearense. Palisades, NY	Publications
O Contexto Sóciopolítico das Reformas na Gestão de Água no Ceará.		Taddei, R., Broad, K. & Pfaff, A. \| In Lall, U. & Souza Filho, F.A. (Eds.) Gerenciamento Integrado dos Recursos Hídricos com Incorporação da Previsão Climática: da Informação e Previsão Climática à Redução das Vulnerabilidades às Secas no Semi-Ári	Publications
Oceans and human health: Emerging public health risks in the marine environment	2006	Fleming, L.E., Broad, K., Clement, A., Dewailly, E., Elmir, S., Knap, A., Pomponi, S.A., Smith, S., Solo Gabriele, H., & Walsh, P. \| Marine Pollution Bulletin, 53, 545-560	Publications	Abstract: There has been an increasing recognition of the inter-relationship between human health and the oceans. Traditionally, the focus of research and concern has been on the impact of human activities on the oceans, particularly through anthropogenic pollution and the exploitation of marine resources. More recently, there has been recognition of the potential direct impact of the oceans on human health, both detrimental and beneficial. Areas identified include: global change, harmful algal blooms (HABs), microbial and chemical contamination of marine waters and seafood, and marine models and natural products from the seas. It is hoped that through the recognition of the inter-dependence of the health of both humans and the oceans, efforts will be made to restore and preserve the oceans.10.1016/j.marpolbul.2006.08.012
Older is Wiser When it Comes to Money	2013-09-25	Laboratory Equipment	CRED in the News
Older is wiser, at least economically	2013-09-24	Science Codex	CRED in the News
Older Is Wiser, at Least Economically	2013-09-24	Science Daily	CRED in the News
Older people economically wiser	2013-09-25	Deccan Chronicle	CRED in the News
On Climate, Ethics, Cow Burps and the Dalai Lama	2011-10-21	The New York Times	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Co-Director, Elke Weber
On the importance of strengthening moderate beliefs in climate science to foster support for immediate action.	2013-12-03	Wendling, Z.A., Attari, S.Z., Carley, S.R., Krauss, R.M, Warren, D.C., Rupp, J.A., Graham, J.D. \| Sustainability, 5(12), 5153-5170	Publications	Abstract: Whereas many studies focus on climate skeptics to explain the lack of support for immediate action on climate change, this research examines the effect of moderate believers in climate science. Using data from a representative survey of 832 Indiana residents, we find that agreement with basic scientific conclusions about climate change is the strongest predictor of support for immediate action, and the strength of that agreement is an important characteristic of this association. Responses indicate widespread acceptance of climate change, moderate levels of risk perception, and limited support for immediate action. Half of the respondents (50%) preferred “more research” over “immediate action” (38%) and “no action” (12%) as a response to climate change. The probability of preferring immediate action is close to zero for those who strongly or somewhat disbelieve in climate change, but as belief in climate change grows from moderate to strong, the probability of preferring immediate action increases substantially; the strongest believers have a predicted probability of preferring immediate action of 71%. These findings suggest that, instead of simply engaging skeptics, increasing public support for immediate action might entail motivating those with moderate beliefs in climate change to hold their views with greater conviction.
Op-Ed: Game Theory and Public Hearings: A Decision Theorist’s Perspective	2012-12-03	NewCastleNOW	CRED in the News
Opinion: Earth Day, climate change and the god of small things	2015-04-22	Ruth Greenspan Bell and Elke U. Weber \| Environmental Health News	CRED in the News
Opinion: We can build a better climate solution today	2014-11-12	Tripp Shealy and Elke U. Weber \| The Daily Climate	CRED in the News
Opinion: We're leaving too many energy dollars behind us, on the ground	2014-05-19	Ruth Greenspan Bell & Elke U. Weber \| The Daily Climate	CRED in the News
Oráculos da Chuva em Tempos Modernos: Mídia, Desenvolvimento Econômico, e as Transformações na Identidade Social dos Profetas do Sertão.	2006	Taddei, R. \| In Martins, K (Org.) Os Profetas da Chuva. Fortaleza: Tempo D'Imagem	Publications
Oráculos de lluvia en tiempos modernos - Medios, desarrollo económico y transformaciones de identidad social de los profetas del sertão en el Nordeste de Brasil	2008	Taddei, R. \| In Garcia Acosta, V. (Coord.) Historia y Desastres en América Latina, III. México: Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social / La Red, 2008, pp. 331-352.	Publications
Os usos da lei e a vida social da legislação hídrica - Notas e reflexões sobre o caso do Ceará.	2004	Taddei, R. \| Revista Teoria e Pesquisa, No. 44/45	Publications
Overcoming Decision Biases to Reduce Losses from Natural Catastrophes	2013-01-10	Kunreuther, H., Meyer, R., Michel-Kerjan, E. \| In E. Shafir (Eds.), The Behavioral Foundations of Public Policy, Princeton University Press, 398	Publications
Ownership Effect in the Wild: Influence of Land Ownership on Agribusiness Goals and Decisions in the Argentine Pampas	2015-03-06	Arora, P., Bert, F., Podesta, G., Krantz, D.H., \| Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, doi: 10.1016/j.socec.2015.02.007	Publications	Abstract: The psychological influence of ownership, albeit well studied in the lab, is less understood in the field. We examine its influence on agribusiness goals and decisions in the Argentine Pampas. Study 1, a survey of agribusinesses, finds differences in goal focus based on land ownership: Ownership positively predicts a focus on longer-term economic and social goals, as well as pro-environmental attitudes. Land ownership negatively predicts short-term profitability goal focus, which in turn mediates the use of futures/options to maximize profit, and influences land use for cash crops. Study 2 unpacks within-business differences via interviews with agribusiness that farm both owned and rented land. Ownership-based differences are observed in underlying intentions: the same individual focuses on enhancing the value of owned land, but on maximizing returns from rented land. This focus on deriving immediate value may be motivated by the initial rental cost incurred by the tenant, which can be thought of as a loss, making immediate profitability a more salient goal. This short-term focus, though logical in light of prevailing one-year leases in the Pampas, ignores that over 85% of leases are renewed by the same agribusiness, suggesting that the same tenant may well be the person facing future consequences. We explore the possibility that tenants may be effectively caught in a two-person social dilemma with their future selves.
Paleoclimate histories improve access and sustainability in index insurance programs	2013-04-18	Bell, A. R., Osgood, D. E., Cook, B. I., Anchukaitis, K. J., McCarney, G. R., Greene, A. M., & Cook, E. R. \| Global Environmental Change.	Publications
Paleoclimate histories improve access and sustainability in index insurance programs	2013-08-01	Bell, A.R., Osgood, D., Cook, B.I., Anchukaitis, K.J., McCarney, G., Greene, A., Buckley, B.M., Cook, E.R. \| Global Environmental Change , 23(4), pp. 774-781	Publications	Proxy-based climate reconstructions can extend instrumental records by hundreds of years, providing a wealth of climate information at high temporal resolution. To date, however, their usefulness for informing climate risk and variability in policy and social applications has been understudied. Here, we apply tree-ring based reconstructions of drought for the last 700 years in a climate index insurance framework to show that additional information from long climate reconstructions significantly improves our understanding of the underlying climate distributions and variability. We further show that this added information can be used to better characterize risk to insurance providers, in many cases providing meaningful reductions in long-term contract costs to farmers in stand-alone policies. The impact of uncertainty on insurance premiums can also be reduced when insurers diversify portfolios, and the availability of long-term climate information from tree rings across a broad geographic range provides an opportunity to characterize spatial correlation in climate risk across geographic regions. Our results are robust to the range of climate variability experienced over the last 400 years and in model simulations of the twenty-first century, even within the context of changing baselines due to low frequency variability and secular climate trends. These results demonstrate the utility of longer-term climate histories in index insurance applications. Furthermore, they make the case from a climate-variability perspective for the continued importance of such approaches to improving the instrumental climate record, even into a non-stationary climate future.
Paradise Parking Lot with Steve Barnett	2011-04-13	Progressive Radio Network	CRED in the News	Paradise Parking Lot with Steve Barnett on PRN featured research co-authored by CRED graduate student Lisa Zaval, with Eric Johnson and Ye Li.
Participatory approaches to sustainability.		Peterson, N. & Broad, K. \| In Sachs, J. & Schlosser, P. (Eds.) Is Sustainability Feasible? (in press)	Publications
Participatory processes and climate forecast use: sociocultural context, discussion, and consensus	2010-06-08	Peterson, N., Broad, K., Orlove, B.S., Roncoli, C., Taddei, R., & Velez, M.A. \| Climate and Development. Vol. 2: 14-29	Publications	Abstract: Participatory processes are increasingly promoted by various groups as among the best approaches to increase efficiency, democracy and equity in decisions involving climate forecasts. Yet little is understood about the interaction between participation and its surrounding socio-cultural environment in the context of the dissemination and use of climate forecasts. This article draws on two case studies: water allocation choices in Brazil and agricultural decision making in Uganda. The focus is on two under-studied aspects of participatory processes: (1) the social norms of interactions that affect activity and outcomes through exclusion, pre-meetings, alliances, language and non-linguistic events; and (2) the diversity of goals and outcomes that motivate participation, including desire for consensus, social networking and community building. These norms and goals often result in behaviours and outcomes unanticipated by the promoters. We argue that the influence of socio-cultural context on the process is not only an unavoidable characteristic of participation, but also what makes it possible in the first place, bringing meaning and purpose to the activity for many participants.10.3763/cdev.2010.0033
Party's Over After Sandy	2012-11-06	Wall Street Journal	CRED in the News
Paying for what was free: Lessons from the New York Times paywall	2012-01-12	Cook, J.E., Attari, S.Z. \| Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15 (12), 682-687	Publications	Abstract: In a national online longitudinal survey, participants reported their attitudes and behaviors in response to the recently implemented metered paywall by the New York Times. Previously free online content now requires a digital subscription to access beyond a small free monthly allotment. Participants were surveyed shortly after the paywall was announced and again 11 weeks after it was implemented to understand how they would react and adapt to this change. Most readers planned not to pay and ultimately did not. Instead, they devalued the newspaper, visited its Web site less frequently, and used loopholes, particularly those who thought the paywall would lead to inequality. Results of an experimental justiﬁcation manipulation revealed that framing the paywall in terms of ﬁnancial necessity moderately increased support and willingness to pay. Framing the paywall in terms of a proﬁt motive proved to be a noncompelling justiﬁcation, sharply decreasing both support and willingness to pay. Results suggest that people react negatively to paying for previously free content, but change can be facilitated with compelling justiﬁcations that emphasize fairness.
Penn professor simulates next Sandy scenario	2012-11-28	Metro	CRED in the News
People Don't Even Respect Hurricanes with Female Names	2014-06-02	Dennis Mersereau \| The Vane	CRED in the News
People's belief in climate change shifts with the weather, study finds	2011-04-06	Click Green	CRED in the News	Featuring published research co-authored by CRED graduate student Lisa Zaval, with Eric Johnson and Ye Li
Percepción de variabilidad climática, uso de información y estrategias de los agentes frente al riesgo. Análisis de esquemas decisionales en agricultores de la región pampeana argentina	2008	Barsky, A., Podestá, G., & Ruiz Toranzo, F. \| Mundo Agrario- Revista de Estudios Rurales, 8(16), 00-00, ISSN 1515-5994	Publications	Abstract: This article analyzes the elements that are considered by Pampean producers when making production decisions considering the climate as a factor. The article focuses on how producers perceive climate variability and on the type of information they manage when it comes to mid-term perspectives. During 2005, interviews were held with 60 producers, who were selected from two different zones of the Pampa region with different physical characteristics, thirty of them belonging to the central humid pampas in Buenos Aires province and the other thirty belonging toborder semiarid pampas located at Cordoba province. The results of the analysis help characterize the mental models behind the decision-making process in the individuals' perceptions, bearing in mind that their activity entails exposure to risk. The research's main objective is to propose communication measures that may help improve the use of climate forecasts by the social agents, assuming this is an available tool with significant potential to provide a more scientific support to the procedures of the production agents and to -improve economic earnings performance. 1515-5994
Perceptions and communication strategies for the many uncertainties relevant for climate policy	2013-10-18	Patt, Anthony G., Weber, E.U. \| WIREs Climate Change	Publications	Abstract: Public opinion polls reveal that the perception of climate change as an uncertain phenomenon is increasing, even as consensus has increased within the scientific community of its reality and its attribution to human causes. At the same time, the scientific community has sought to improve its communication practices, in order to present a more accurate picture to the public and policy makers of the state of scientific knowledge about climate change. In this review article, we examine two sets of insights that could influence the success of such communication efforts. The first set questions which uncertainties matter for effective climate policy. While the literature has focused disproportionately on uncertainties with respect to the climate system, we draw attention here to uncertainties associated with the solution space. The second set examines which factors lead people to take slow and deliberated decisions versus quick and spontaneous ones, and looks at the results of these two systems of thought on climate change action. From the review of these two sets of literature, we propose a new hypothesis: that the gap between public and scientific attitudes toward climate change will narrow not because of greater attention to and communication of climate system risks and uncertainties, but rather out of growing experience with the policies and technological systems needed to address the problem.
Perceptions of Water Use	2014-03-03	Attari, Shahzeen Z. (2014). \| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences	Publications	Abstract: In a national online survey, 1,020 participants reported their perceptions of water use for household activities. When asked for the most effective strategy they could implement to conserve water in their lives, or what other Americans could do, most participants mentioned curtailment (e.g., taking shorter showers, turning off the water while brushing teeth) rather than efficiency improvements (e.g., replacing toilets, retrofitting washers). This contrasts with expert recommendations. Additionally, some participants are more likely to list curtailment actions for themselves, but list efficiency actions for other Americans. For a sample of 17 activities, participants underestimated water use by a factor of 2 on average, with large underestimates for high water-use activities. An additional ranking task showed poor discrimination of low vs. high embodied water content in food products. High numeracy scores, older age, and male sex were associated with more accurate perceptions of water use. Overall, perception of water use is more accurate than the perception of energy consumption and savings previously reported. Well-designed efforts to improve public understanding of household water use could pay large dividends for behavioral adaptation to temporary or long-term decreases in availability of fresh water.
Perspectives on Ecosystem Based Management for Delivering Ecosystem Services with an Example from an Eighteen-Species Marine Model	2012-01-01	Finoff, D., Gong, M., and Tschirhart, J. \| International Review of Environmental and Resource Economics 6(1): 79-118	Publications	"(Ecologists) recommendations, when problems arise, tend to favor the preservation of nature, or to favor management programs that optimize only the biological side of the problem. It is not surprising that man, in self-interest, has usually chosen instead the recommendations of the economist or engineer, who is trained to optimize the human side of the problem.'' (Smith, 1968, p. 11)10.1561/101.00000048
Plan to track climate emissions would use network of satellites	2016-11-05	Take Two \| 89.3 KPCC	CRED in the News
Planning for Future Disasters	2011-09-19	State of the Planet	CRED in the News	Written by CRED graduate student Katherine Thompson, and featuring CRED Co-Directors Ben Orlove, Kenneth Broad and CRED researcher Robert Meyer.
Polar Exploration & Risky Decisionmaking	2007-03-06	The Street	CRED in the News
Policy Grammar	2014-11-11	BYU Radio Morning Show	CRED in the News
Political ideology affects energy-efficiency attitudes and choices	2013-04-29	Gromet, D., Kunreuther, H., and Larrick, R. \| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , Online www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1218453110	Publications
Population Researchers Look for Room in Academe	2011-10-30	The Chronicle of Higher Education	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED Managing Director Sabine Marx
Positive and negative spillover of pro-environmental behavior: An integrative review and theoretical framework	2014-11-01	Truelove, H.B., Carrico, A.R., Weber, E.U., Raimi, K.T., Vandenbergh, M.P. \| Global Environmental Change , 29, pp. 127-138	Publications	Abstract: A recent surge of research has investigated the potential of pro-environmental behavior interventions to affect other pro-environmental behaviors not initially targeted by the intervention. The evidence evaluating these spillover effects has been mixed, with some studies finding evidence for positive spillover (i.e., one pro-environmental behavior increases the likelihood of performing additional pro-environmental behaviors) and others finding negative spillover (i.e., one pro-environmental behavior decreases the likelihood of additional pro-environmental behaviors). Different academic disciplines have investigated this question, employing different methodologies and arriving at divergent findings. This paper provides a unifying theoretical framework and uses the framework to review the existing research on pro-environmental behavior spillover. Our framework identifies different decision modes as competing mechanisms that drive adoption of initial pro-environmental behaviors, with different consequences for subsequent pro-environmental behaviors, leading to positive, negative, or no spillover. Attribution of the initial pro-environmental behavior to either an external motivator (e.g., a price signal) or internal motivator (e.g., self-identity) also matters. In addition, the characteristics of and similarity between initial and subsequent pro-environmental behaviors can be expected to moderate predicted spillover effects. We explore the implications of our model for policymakers and practitioners, and suggest key areas where future research on the topic would be most beneficial.
Positive Thinking for a Cooler World	2009-08-19	New Scientist	CRED in the News
Predictors of public climate change awareness and risk perception around the world	2015-07-27	Lee, T.M., Markowitz, E.M., Howe, P.D., Ko, C., Leiserowitz, A.A. \| Nature Climate Change	Publications	Abstract: Climate change is a threat to human societies and natural ecosystems, yet public opinion research finds that public awareness and concern vary greatly. Here, using an unprecedented survey of 119 countries, we determine the relative influence of socio-demographic characteristics, geography, perceived well-being, and beliefs on public climate change awareness and risk perceptions at national scales. Worldwide, educational attainment is the single strongest predictor of climate change awareness. Understanding the anthropogenic cause of climate change is the strongest predictor of climate change risk perceptions, particularly in Latin America and Europe, whereas perception of local temperature change is the strongest predictor in many African and Asian countries. However, other key factors associated with public awareness and risk perceptions highlight the need to develop tailored climate communication strategies for individual nations. The results suggest that improving basic education, climate literacy, and public understanding of the local dimensions of climate change are vital to public engagement and support for climate action.
Pro-Environment Light Bulb Labeling Turns Off Conservatives, Study Finds	2013-04-30	National Geographic	CRED in the News
Professors argue that city still unprepared for storms one year after Sandy	2013-10-31	Columbia Spectator	CRED in the News
Protecting Against Low Probability Disasters: The Role of Worry	2012-01-12	Schade, C., Kunreuther, H., Koellinger, P. \| Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 25 (5), 534-543	Publications	Abstract: We carry out a large monetary stakes insurance experiment with very small probabilities of losses and ambiguous as well as exact probabilities. Many individuals do not want to pay anything for insurance whether the probabilities are given exactly or are ambiguous. Many others, however, are willing to pay surprisingly large amounts. With ambiguity, the percentage of those paying nothing is smaller and the willingness to pay (WTP) of the other individuals larger than with exact probabilities. Comparing elasticities with ambiguity, we ﬁnd that worry is much more important than subjective probability in determining WTP for insurance. Furthermore, when the ambiguous loss probability is increased by a factor of 1000, it has almost no effect on WTP.
Psychological and social factors associated with wastewater reuse emotional discomfort	2015-02-07	Wester, J., Timpano, K. R., Cek, D., Lieberman, D., Fieldstone, S., Broad, K. \| Journal of Environmental Psychology, 42, pp. 16-23	Publications	Abstract: Wastewater reuse (WWR) technology has improved greatly in recent decades and may be an important solution to global water challenges. Nevertheless, several psychological and social barriers to widespread adoption still exist. Negative emotional reactions to WWR, known as the “yuck factor,” have been identified as central to public acceptance. The present study used a large, context-neutral, web-based, U.S. sample (N ¼ 207), to examine factors underlying these negative emotions, here measured as discomfort felt toward WWR. We used a more nuanced measure to isolate what aspects of disgust sensitivity predict discomfort and then explored this relationship in the context of other individual and psychological differences. Being female, having less education, and being particularly sensitive to pathogen-related disgust stimuli, all were factors that were significantly and independently associated with reported discomfort. Mediation analysis showed that women felt greater discomfort because of higher levels of pathogen disgust sensitivity.
Psychology of Climate Change Communication	2015-11-16	Amy Kalisher \| Hello Climate Change podcast	CRED in the News
Psychology of Environmental Decision Making and Sustainable Behavior	2014-01-06	State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Psychology: Local weather and climate concern	2014-01-29	Nature Climate Change	CRED in the News
Public engagement with climate change: the role of human values	2014-01-21	Corner, A., Markowitz, E., Pidgeon, N. \| WIREs Climate Change	Publications	Abstract: A long history of interdisciplinary research highlights the powerful role that human values play in shaping individuals' engagement with environmental issues. That certain values are supportive of proenvironmental orientation and behavior is now well established. But as the challenge of communicating the risks of climate change has grown increasingly urgent, there has been a rise in interest around how values shape public engagement with this issue. In the current paper, we review the growing body of work that explores the role of human values (and the closely related concept of cultural worldviews) in public engagement with climate change. Following a brief conceptual overview of values and their relationship to environmental engagement in general, we then provide a review of the literature linking value-orientations and engagement with climate change. We also review both academic and ‘gray’ literature from civil society organizations that has focused on how public messages about climate change should be framed, and discuss the significance of research on human values for climate change communication strategies.
Public perceptions of energy consumption and savings	2010-08-16	Attari, S. Z., DeKay, M.L., Davidson, C. I., & Bruine de Bruin, W. \| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107(37), 16054-16059.	Publications	Abstract: In a national online survey, 505 participants reported their perceptions of energy consumption and savings for a variety of household, transportation, and recycling activities. When asked for the most effective strategy they could implement to conserve energy, most participants mentioned curtailment (e.g., turning off lights, driving less) rather than efﬁciency improvements (e.g., installing more efﬁcient light bulbs and appliances), in contrast to experts’ recommendations. For a sample of 15 activities, participants underestimated energy use and savings by a factor of 2.8 on average, with small overestimates for low-energy activities and large underestimates for high-energy activities. Additional estimation and ranking tasks also yielded relatively ﬂat functions for perceived energy use and savings. Across several tasks, participants with higher numeracy scores and stronger proenvironmental attitudes had more accurate perceptions. The serious deﬁciencies highlighted by these results suggest that well-designed efforts to improve the public’s understanding of energy use and savings could pay large dividends.10.1073/pnas.1001509107
Public policy for thee, but not for me: Varying grammatical person of public policy justifications influences their support	2014-09-01	Cornwell, J. F. M. & Krantz, D. H. \| Judgment and Decision Making, 9(5), 433-444	Publications	Abstract: Past research has shown that people consistently believe that others are more easily manipulated by external influences than they themselves are—a phenomenon called the “third-person effect” (Davison, 1983). The present research investigates whether support for public policies aimed at changing behavior using incentives and other decision “nudges” is affected by this bias. Across two studies, we phrased justification for public policy initiatives using either the second- or third-person plural. In Study 1, we found that support for policies is higher when their justification points to people in general rather than the general “you”, and in Study 2 we found that this former phrasing also improves support compared to a no-justification control condition. Policy support is mediated by beliefs about the likelihood of success of the policies (as opposed to beliefs about the policies’ unintended consequences), and, in the second-person condition, is inversely related to a sense of personal agency. These effects suggest that the third-person effect holds true for nudge-type and incentive-based public policies, with implications for their popular support.
Public praise vs. private pay: Effects of rewards on energy conservation in the workplace	2013-02-01	Handgraaf, M.J.J., Van Lidth de Jeude, M.A.., & Appelt, K.C. \| Ecological Economics 86, 86-92	Publications	Abstract: Any solution to rising levels of CO2 depends on human behavior. One common approach to changing human behavior is rewarding desired behavior. Because financial incentives often have side effects that diminish efficacy, we predict that more psychologically oriented social rewards are more effective, because they invoke adherence to descriptive and injunctive social norms. We investigated this by measuring electricity use for 13 weeks at a Dutch firm. Each week, employees were rewarded for conserving energy. They either received monetary rewards (€0-€5) or social rewards (grade points with a descriptive comment). Rewards were either private or public. In both the short and long term, public rewards outperformed private rewards, and social rewards outperformed monetary rewards. This suggests that private monetary rewards, although popular, may be ineffective. Instead, public social rewards may be a more promising approach to stimulating energy conservation. Such social rewards do not crowd out intrinsic motivation, have less need for large-scale institutions or exogenous funding, and work regardless of who is paying the energy bill. Thus, we argue that the social norms approach should be considered more frequently as a valuable tool in the intervention tool-kit, especially when focusing on low-cost environmental behavior.
Public Understanding of Climate Change in the United States	2011-06-01	Weber, E. U., & Stern, P.C. \| American Psychologist, Vol. 6, No. 4, 315-328	Publications	Abstract: This article considers scientific and public understandings of climate change and addresses the following question: Why is it that while scientific evidence has accumulated to document global climate change and scientific opinion has solidified about its existence and causes, U.S. public opinion has not and has instead become more polarized? Our review supports a constructivist account of human judgment. Public understanding is affected by the inherent difficulty of understanding climate change, the mismatch between people's usual modes of understanding and the task, and, particularly in the United States, a continuing societal struggle to shape the frames and mental models people use to understand the phenomena. We conclude by discussing ways in which psychology can help to improve public understanding of climate change and link a better understanding to action. 10.1037/a0023253
Public’s climate change concerns ‘shaped by weather outside’	2014-01-13	Alex Kirby \| Responding to Climate Change	CRED in the News
Q & A With Richard Thaler On What It Really Means To Be A "Nudge"	2015-02-20	Peter Ubel \| Forbes	CRED in the News
Quantifying Riverine and Storm-Surge Flood Risk by Single-Family Residence: Application in Texas	2013-06-19	Czajkowski, J., Kunreuther,H., Michel-Kerjan, E. (2013) \| Risk Analysis 33: 2092-2110	Publications	Abstract: The development of catastrophe models in recent years allows for assessment of the flood hazard much more effectively than when the federally run National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created in 1968. We propose and then demonstrate a methodological approach to determine pure premiums based on the entire distribution of possible flood events. We apply hazard, exposure, and vulnerability analyses to a sample of 300,000 single-family residences in two counties in Texas (Travis and Galveston) using state-of-the-art flood catastrophe models. Even in zones of similar flood risk classification by FEMA there is substantial variation in exposure between coastal and inland flood risk. For instance, homes in the designated moderate-risk X500/B zones in Galveston are exposed to a flood risk on average 2.5 times greater than residences in X500/B zones in Travis. The results also show very similar average annual loss (corrected for exposure) for a number of residences despite their being in different FEMA flood zones. We also find significant storm-surge exposure outside of the FEMA designated storm-surge risk zones. Taken together these findings highlight the importance of a microanalysis of flood exposure. The process of aggregating risk at a flood zone level—as currently undertaken by FEMA—provides a false sense of uniformity. As our analysis indicates, the technology to delineate the flood risks exists today.
Realizing managed retreat and innovation in state-level coastal management planning	2014-12-01	Dyckman, C.S., St. John, C., London, J.B. \| Ocean & Coastal Management, 102(A), 212-223.	Publications
Reasons for cooperation and defection in real-world social dilemmas	2014-07-01	Attari, S.Z., Krantz, D.H., Weber, E.U. \| Judgment and Decision Making 9(4), pp. 316-334.	Publications	Abstract: Interventions to increase cooperation in social dilemmas depend on understanding decision makers’ motivations for cooperation or defection. We examined these in five real-world social dilemmas: situations where private interests are at odds with collective ones. An online survey (N = 929) asked respondents whether or not they cooperated in each social dilemma and then elicited both open-ended reports of reasons for their choices and endorsements of a provided list of reasons. The dilemmas chosen were ones that permit individual action rather than voting or advocacy: (1) conserving energy, (2) donating blood, (3) getting a flu vaccination, (4) donating to National Public Radio (NPR), and (5) buying green electricity. Self-reported cooperation is weakly but positively correlated across these dilemmas. Cooperation in each dilemma correlates fairly strongly with self-reported altruism and with punitive attitudes toward defectors. Some strong domain-specific behaviors and beliefs also correlate with cooperation. The strongest example is frequency of listening to NPR, which predicts donation. Socio-demographic variables relate only weakly to cooperation. Respondents who self report cooperation usually cite social reasons (including reciprocity) for their choice. Defectors often give self-interest reasons but there are also some domain-specific reasons—some report that they are not eligible to donate blood; some cannot buy green electricity because they do not pay their own electric bills. Cooperators generally report that several of the provided reasons match their actual reasons fairly well, but most defectors endorse none or at most one of the provided reasons for defection. In particular, defectors often view cooperation as costly but do not endorse free riding as a reason for defection. We tentatively conclude that cooperation in these settings is based mostly on pro-social norms and defection on a mixture of self-interest and the possibly motivated perception that situational circumstances prevent cooperation in the given situation.
Recognitions and Responsibilities: On the Origins of the Uneven Attention to Climate Change around the World	2014-06-01	Orlove, B., Lazrus, H., Hovelsrud, G.K., Giannini, A. \| Current Anthropology , 55(3), pp. 249-275.	Publications	Abstract: Though climate change is a global process, current discussions emphasize its local impacts. A review of media representations, public opinion polls, international organization documents, and scientific reports shows that global attention to climate change is distributed unevenly, with the impacts of climate change seen as an urgent concern in some places and less pressing in others. This uneven attention, or specificity, is linked to issues of selectivity (the inclusion of some cases and exclusion of others), historicity (the long temporal depth of the pathways to inclusion or exclusion), and consequentiality (the effects of this specificity on claims of responsibility for climate change). These issues are explored through a historical examination of four cases—two (the Arctic, low-lying islands) strongly engaged with climate change frameworks, and two (mountains, deserts) closely associated with other frameworks of sustainable development rather than climate change. For all four regions, the 1960s and 1970s were a key period of initial involvement with environmental issues; the organizations and frameworks that developed at that time shaped the engagement with climate change issues. In turn, the association of climate change with a few remote areas influences climate change institutions and discourses at a global scale.
Reconciling Innovation with Sustainability: A Psychologist's Perspective		Krantz, D.H. \| In Sachs, J. & Schlosser, P. (Eds.) Is Sustainability Feasible? (in press)	Publications
Recycling Helps, but It’s Not All You Can Do for the Environment	2012-10-19	New York Times	CRED in the News
Reducing Carbon-Based Energy Consumption through Changes in Household Behavior	2013-01-03	Dietz, T., Stern, P. C., & Weber, E. U. \| Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 142(1), 78-89	Publications	Abstract: Actions by individuals and households to reduce carbon-based energy consumption have the potential to change the picture of U.S. energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the near term. To tap this potential, however, energy policies and programs need to replace outmoded assumptions about what drives human behavior; they must integrate insights from the behavioral and social sciences with those from engineering and economics. This integrated approach has thus far only occasionally been implemented. This essay summarizes knowledge from the social sciences and from highly successful energy programs to show what the potential is and how it can be achieved. 10.1162/DAED_a_00186
Reducing Losses from Catastrophes: Role of Insurance and Other Policy Tools	2015-12-31	Kunreuther, H. \| Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Developement, 58:1, 30-37. DOI: 10.1080/00139157.2016.1112166	Publications
Regulatory fit in the goal-pursuit process.	2009-01-01	Higgins, E. T. \| In G. B. Moskowitz & H. Grant (Eds.), The Psychology of Goals (pp. 505-533). New York: Guilford Press.	Publications
Remember Me: Personal Legacy and Global Warming	2014-10-15	Wray Herbert \|Psychological Science	CRED in the News
Remember Me: Personal Legacy and Global Warming	2014-10-15	Wray Herbert \| Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Reply to Frederick et al.: Anchoring effects on energy perceptions.	2011-02-01	Attari, S. Z., DeKay, M. L., Davidson, C. I., & Bruine de Bruin, W. \| Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(8), E24 (Letter).	Publications	10.1073/pnas.1019040108
Report Summary: “Connecting on Climate: A Guide to Effective Climate Change Communication”	2015-01-05	Dan Murphy \| The Inefficiencies (and Possibilities) of Climate Change Communication Blog	CRED in the News
Research Heroes: Elke Weber	2013-02-19	InDecision Blog	CRED in the News
Risk Aversion When Gains Are Likely and Unlikely: Evidence from a Natural Experiment with Large Stakes	2008	Blavatskyy, P. and G. Pogrebna \|Theory and Decision, 64(2), pp. 395-420	Publications	Abstract: In the television show Deal or No Deal a contestant is endowed with a sealed box, which potentially contains a large monetary prize. In the course of the show the contestant learns more information about the distribution of possible monetary prizes inside her box. Consider two groups of contestants, who learned that the chances of their boxes containing a large prize are 20% and 80% correspondingly. Contestants in both groups receive qualitatively similar price offers for selling the content of their boxes. If contestants are less risk averse when facing unlikely gains, the price offer is likely to be more frequently rejected in the ﬁrst group than in the second group. However, the fraction of rejections is virtually identical across two groups. Thus, contestants appear to have identical risk attitudes over (large) gains of low and high probability.10.1007/s11238-007-9056-0
Risk Communication: The Communication of Cost- Effectiveness Studies of Anti-Malaria Interventions to Policy Makers	2013-02-01	Willis, D.W. \| European Journal of Risk Regulation, (2), 265-268	Publications
Risk Management and Climate Change		Kunreuther, H., Heal, G., Allen, M., Edenhofer, O., Field, C.B., Yohe, G. \| Nature Climate Change, (3), 447-450	Publications	Abstract: The selection of climate policies should be an exercise in risk management reflecting the many relevant sources of uncertainty. Studies of climate change and its impacts rarely yield consensus on the distribution of exposure, vulnerability, or possible outcomes. Hence policy analysis cannot effectively evaluate alternatives using standard approaches such as expected utility theory and benefit-cost analysis. This perspective highlights the value of robust decision-making tools designed for situations, such as evaluating climate policies, where generally agreed-upon probability distributions are not available and stakeholders differ in their degree of risk tolerance. This broader risk management approach enables one to examine a range of possible outcomes and the uncertainty surrounding their likelihoods.
Sandy's Warning	2012-11-21	PBS Nova	CRED in the News
Save Your Energy	2010-08-17	Pocket Science	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Scale and metric design as choice architecture tools		Camilleri, A. R. & Larrick, R. P (published) \| Marketing and Public Policy Conference Proceedings 2013 62-63	Publications
Scaling up index insurance for smallholder farmers: Recent evidence and insights	2015-01-27	Greatrex, H., Hansen, J., Garvin, S., Diro, R., Blakeley, S., Le Guen, M., Rao, K., Osgood, D. CCAFS Report No. 14 Copenhagen: CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).	Reports	Executive Summary: This report explores evidence and insights from five case studies that have made significant recent progress in addressing the challenge of insuring poor smallholder farmers and pastoralists in the developing world. In India, national index insurance programmes have reached over 30 million farmers through a mandatory link with agricultural credit and strong government support. In East Africa (Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania), the Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise (ACRE) has recently scaled to reach nearly 200,000 farmers, bundling index insurance with agricultural credit and farm inputs. ACRE has built on strong partnerships with regional initiatives such as M-PESA mobile banking. In Ethiopia and Senegal, the R4 Rural Resilience Initiative has scaled unsubsidized index insurance to over 20,000 poor smallholder farmers who were previously considered uninsurable, using insurance as an integral part of a comprehensive risk management portfolio. With strong public and private sector support, the Mongolia Index-Based Livestock Insurance Project (IBLIP) insures more than 15,000 nomadic herders and links commercial insurance with a government disaster safety net. Finally, the Index-Based Livestock Insurance (IBLI) project in Kenya and Ethiopia demonstrates innovative approaches to insuring poor nomadic pastoralists in challenging circumstances. A few common features appear to have contributed to recent progress within these case studies: • explicitly targeting obstacles to improving farmer income; • integration of insurance with other development interventions; • giving farmers a voice in the design of products; • investing in local capacity; and • investing in science-based index development. Evidence from these case studies can inform the ongoing debate about the viability of scaling up index-based insurance for vulnerable smallholder farmers in the developing world. The rapid progress observed in recent years suggests that index insurance has the potential to benefit smallholder farmers at a meaningful scale, and suggests the need to reassess arguments that lack of demand and practical implementation challenges prevent index-based insurance from being a useful tool to reduce rural poverty.
Science in Action	2010-09-03	BBC	CRED in the News	Press featuring published research by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari. [Segment from 02:18 to 07:30]
Science-based insurance	2012-04-04	Brown, M., Osgood, D., and Carriquiry, M. \| Nature Geoscience, 213-214	Publications	Summary: Crops are at risk in a changing climate. Farmers in the developing world will be able to insure against harvest failure if robust insurance packages, based on a geophysical index rather than individual loss, become widely available. 10.1038/ngeo1117
Scientists ask governor for meeting to talk climate science	2014-07-16	Mary Ellen Klas \| Miami Herald	CRED in the News
Scientists Speak Out on Climate: Is Anyone Listening?	2014-04-09	Renee Cho \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Scientists, local leaders send letter, urge Romney, Obama to address climate change	2012-10-11	Naplesnews	CRED in the News
Scott says he’ll meet scientists on climate change	2014-07-16	The Associated Press	CRED in the News
Self-control in groups.	2010	Levine, J. M., Alexander, K., & Hansen, T. \| In R. Hassin, K. N. Ochsner, & Y. Trope (Eds.), Self control in society, mind, & brain. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.	Publications
Semenario Tiempo	2011-01-20	Edición Nº793 (page 2)	CRED in the News	Representatives from IRI (Paul Block, Cathy Vaughn), CRED (Sabine Marx), and Barnard College (Allyza Lustig) conducted a site visit to the Elqui River Basin in Chile. Funded by Earth Institute's Cross-Cutting Initiative, the project seeks to understand how water resource decisions may benefit from incorporation of climate information, specifically at the seasonal and decadal time scales. The January trip was designed to interview local water managers, government agencies, irrigated farmers, research institutes, and academics regarding the degree to which climate information is actively consulted throughout the basin, and the capacity to adopt such practices.
Semenario Tiempo	2011-01-13	Edición Nº792 (page 16)	CRED in the News	Representatives from IRI (Paul Block, Cathy Vaughn), CRED (Sabine Marx), and Barnard College (Allyza Lustig) conducted a site visit to the Elqui River Basin in Chile. Funded by Earth Institute's Cross-Cutting Initiative, the project seeks to understand how water resource decisions may benefit from incorporation of climate information, specifically at the seasonal and decadal time scales. The January trip was designed to interview local water managers, government agencies, irrigated farmers, research institutes, and academics regarding the degree to which climate information is actively consulted throughout the basin, and the capacity to adopt such practices.
Ser-estar no sertão: capítulos da vida como filosofia visceral	2014-05-22	Taddei, R \| Interface - Comunicação, Saúde, Educação , 18(50), pp.545-555	Publications
Shahzeen Attari and Jonathan Bloom Profiles	2015-04-19	WFIU	CRED in the News
Shin Research Excellence Awards	2015-02-04	International Insurance Society	CRED in the News
Signs and sight in Southern Uganda:Representing perception in ordinary conversation	2005	Orlove, B.S.,& Kabugo, M. \| Etnofoor, 18(1), 124-141	Publications
Silver Buckshot: Alternative Pathways Towards Greenhouse Gas Mitigation	2014-08-27	Benjamin Dills \| New Security Beat	CRED in the News
Simulation & Gaming	2013-04-01	Eisenack, K. and Reckien, D. (Eds.). Simulation and Gaming 44 (2-3)	Publications
Single-Year and Multi-Year Insurance Policies in a Competitive Market	2012-08-23	Kleindorfer, P. R., Kunreuther, H., and Ou-Yang, C. \| Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 45, 51-78	Publications	Abstract: This paper examines the demand and supply of annual and multi-year insurance contracts with respect to protection against a catastrophic risk in a competitive market. Insurers who offer annual policies can cancel policies at the end of each year and change the premium in the following year. Multi-year insurance has a fixed annual price for each year and no cancellations are permitted at the end of any given year. Homeowners are identical with respect to their exposure to the hazard. Each homeowner determines whether or not to purchase an annual or multi-year contract so as to maximize her expected utility. The competitive equilibrium consists of a set of prices where homeowners who are not very risk averse decide to be uninsured. Other individuals demand either single-year or multi-year policies depending on their degree of risk aversion and the premiums charged by insurers for each type of policy. 10.1007/s11166-012-9148-2
So You Think You’re a Risk-Taker?	2014-10-24	Jason Zweig \| The Wall Street Journal	CRED in the News
Social influence in groups		Levine, J. M., & Tindale, R. S. (in press) \| In M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), J. Dovidio & J. Simpson (Assoc. Eds.), APA Handbook of personality and social psychology: Vol. 2. Interpersonal relations and group processes, Washington, DC: Amer	Publications
Social participation and the politics of climate in Northeast Brazil.	2012-07-01	Taddei, R. \| In Latta, A. & Wittman, H. (Eds.) Environment and Citizenship in Latin America: Natures, Subjects and Struggles. New York: Berghahn Books ISBN 978-0-85745-747-9	Publications	Abstract: This article examines social participation in the circulation of climate forecasts in the state of Ceará, Northeast Brazil. In that part of the country, the work of meteorology is subject to public scrutiny in newspapers and other forms of public communication, and is also confronted with the work of the rain prophets of rural areas. This creates a social context in which other forms of knowledge other than the scientific one, and other forms of voices other than the scientifically authorized ones, constitute a public arena in which environmental issues and their economic, social and cultural impacts are publicly debated. The article uses the cases of the public participation in meteorology to discuss how environmental citizenship is constructed in local practices, and the challenges and difficulties found in the process. ISBN 978-0-85745-747-9
Some People's Climate Beliefs Shift with the Weather: Study Shows Daily Malleability on a Long-Term Question	2011-04-06	The Earth Institute	CRED in the News	Featuring published research co-authored by CRED graduate student Lisa Zaval, with Eric Johnson and Ye Li
Some People's Climate Beliefs Shift With Weather	2011-04-07	Science Daily	CRED in the News	Featuring published research co-authored by CRED graduate student Lisa Zaval, with Eric Johnson and Ye Li
Some People's Climate Beliefs Shift With Weather	2011-04-08	Medical News Today	CRED in the News
Stemming the invisible energy flow	2010-09-01	Simple Climate	CRED in the News
Stuck on Coal, and Stuck for Words in a High-Tech World	2007-12-04	The New York Times	CRED in the News
Study shows Americans tend to underestimate use of water	2014-03-05	Indiana Daily Student	CRED in the News
Study Shows People Are Clueless About Energy Savings – Here's What Actually Works.	2010-08-18	Tech Crunch	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Study: Americans Have 'No Clue' About Conserving Water	2014-03-03	Alan Neuhauser \| U.S. News and World Report	CRED in the News
Study: Weather-Based Insurance Benefits Farmers	2015-01-05	Kim Lewis \| Voice of America	CRED in the News
Subjective realities of climate change: how mental maps of impacts deliver socially sensible adaptation options	2012-08-03	Diana Reckien, Martin Wildenberg & Michael Bachhofer \| Sustainability Science, Vol. 1	Publications
Survey Shows Americans Underestimate Water Use	2014-03-13	Sara Jerome \| Water Online	CRED in the News
Survey Shows Many Are Clueless On How To Save Energy: People Turn Off Lights in Vain, Ignoring Real Efficiencies	2010-08-16	The Earth Institute	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Survey: Americans clueless on how best to save energy	2010-08-24	USA Today	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
Take Slate's Energy Quiz! Do you know how much energy common household appliances consume?	2011-04-21	Slate	CRED in the News	Featuring CRED postdoc, Shahzeen Attari
Tales from the wild: National Geographic Explorers Come to Madison	2013-01-31	Madison.com	CRED in the News
Talking Climate: a New Guide to More Effective Communication	2014-12-11	David Funkhouser \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
Ten Scientists Want A Meeting With Florida’s Governor To Explain Climate Change	2014-07-16	Jeff Pross \|Think Progress	CRED in the News
The "Snowmageddon Effect": Irrational Beliefs About Climate	2011-03-08	Association for Psychological Science	CRED in the News	Featuring published research co-authored by CRED graduate student Lisa Zaval, with Eric Johnson and Ye Li
The 7 psychological reasons that are stopping us from acting on climate change	2014-12-11	Chris Mooney \| Washington Post	CRED in the News
The Big City Scaled Down for Sustainability	2015-08-12	Kim Martineau \| Columbia Data Science Institute	CRED in the News
The Cloud Hunter's Problem: An Automated Decision Algorithm to Improve the Productivity of Scientific Data Collection in Stochastic Environments	2011-07-01	Small, A., Stefik, J., Verlinde, J. & Johnson, N. \| Monthly Weather Review, 139, 2276-2289	Publications	Abstract: A decision algorithm is presented that improves the productivity of data collection activities in stochastic environments. The algorithm was developed in the context of an aircraft ﬁeld campaign organized to collect data in situ from boundary layer clouds. Required lead times implied that aircraft deployments had to be scheduled in advance, based on imperfect forecasts regarding the presence of conditions meeting speciﬁed requirements. Given an overall cap on the number of ﬂights, daily ﬂy/no-ﬂy decisions were taken traditionally using a discussion-intensive process involving heuristic analysis of weather forecasts by a group of skilled human investigators. An alternative automated decision process uses self-organizing maps to convert weather forecasts into quantiﬁed probabilities of suitable conditions, together with a dynamic programming procedure to compute the opportunity costs of using up scarce ﬂights from the limited budget. Applied to conditions prevailing during the 2009 Routine ARM Aerial Facility (AAF) Clouds with Low Optical Water Depths (CLOWD) Optical Radiative Observations (RACORO) campaign of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, the algorithm shows a 21% increase in data yield and a 66% improvement in skill over the heuristic decision process used traditionally. The algorithmic approach promises to free up investigators’ cognitive resources, reduce stress on ﬂight crews, and increase productivity in a range of data collection applications. 10.1175/2010MWR3576.1
The communication of uncertainty is hindering climate change action	2014-01-31	The Guardian	CRED in the News
The Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory and guidelines for the study of individual differences in judgment and decision-making research	2011-04-01	Appelt, K.C., Milch, K.F., Handgraaf, M.J.J., and Weber, E.U. \| Judgment and Decision Making, 6(3): 252-262	Publications	Abstract: Individual differences in decision making are a topic of longstanding interest, but often yield inconsistent and contradictory results. After providing an overview of individual difference measures that have commonly been used in judgment and decision-making (JDM) research, we suggest that our understanding of individual difference effects in JDM may be improved by amending our approach to studying them. We propose four recommendations for improving the pursuit of individual differences in JDM research: a more systematic approach; more theory-driven selection of measures; a reduced emphasis on main effects in favor of interactions between individual differences and decision features, situational factors, and other individual differences; and more extensive communication of results (whether signiﬁcant or null, published or unpublished). As a ﬁrst step, we offer our database—the Decision Making Individual Differences Inventory (DMIDI; html://www.dmidi.net), a free, public resource that categorizes and describes the most common individual difference measures used in JDM research. Keywords: individual differences, decision making, judgment, inventory, measures
The Deep Sleep: Are Americans waking up to global warming?	2008-11-01	Columbia Magazine	CRED in the News
The Dominance of Dread over Savoring as an Account of the Sign Effect in Discounting		Hardisty, D. J., Frederick, S., & Weber, E. U. (in revision)	Publications
The Dynamics of Hurricane Risk Perception: Real-Time Evidence from the 2012 Atlantic Hurricane Season	2014-09-01	Meyer, R.J., Baker, J., Broad, K., Czajkowski, J., Orlove, B. \| Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 95: 1389–1404	Publications	Abstract: Findings are reported from two field studies that measured the evolution of coastal residents’ risk perceptions and preparation plans as two hurricanes—Isaac and Sandy--- were approaching the United States coast during the 2012 hurricane season. The data suggest that residents threatened by such storms had a poor understanding of the threat posed by the storms; they over-estimated the likelihood that their homes would be subject to hurricane-force wind conditions, but under-estimated the potential damage that such winds could cause, and they misconstrued the greatest threat as coming from wind rather than water. These misperceptions translated into preparation actions that were not well commensurate with the nature and scale of the threat they faced, with residents being well prepared for a modest wind event of short duration but not for a significant wind-and-water catastrophe. Possible causes of the biases and policy implications for improving hurricane warning communication are discussed.
The Flying Classroom Comes to Palau	2014-11-14	Robert Coburn \| National Geographic Explorers Journal	CRED in the News
The Generality of the Emotion Effect on Magnitude Sensitivity	2010-10-01	Gong, M. and Baron, J. \| Journal of Economic Psychology, 32(1):17-24	Publications	Abstract: Three studies asked whether reported emotional response interfere with magnitude sensitivity, defined as a subjective evaluation difference between a high magnitude outcome and a low one. Previous research has reported that emotion reduces magnitude sensitivity under separate evaluation in a gain domain (Hsee & Rottenstreich, 2004), a negative effect. We test the generality of this emotion effect in gain and loss domains, and under separate or joint evaluation mode, using a variety of stimuli. We found an opposite, positive, effect in Experiment 1 (in willingness to pay to save species or prevent health impairments) and Experiment 3 (in willingness to pay to prevent bad outcomes in news stories) but replicated the original negative effect in Experiment 2 (compensation for losses). Further research is needed to disentangle possible causes of these effects and to explore how these findings may be applied to measurement of values for non-market goods.10.1016/j.joep.2010.10.002
The Impact of Perceptual Aliasing on Exploration and Learning in a Dynamic Decision Making Task	2010-08-14	Zaval, L. & Gureckis, T. \| In Ohlsson, S. & Catrambone, R. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society	Publications	Abstract: Perceptual aliasing arises in situations where multiple, distinct states of the world give rise to the same percept. In this study, we examine how the degree of perceptual aliasing in a task impacts the ability of human agents to learn reward-maximizing decision strategies. Previous work has shown that the presence of perceptual cues that help signal distinct states of the environment can improve the ability of learners to adopt an optimal decision strategy in sequential decision making tasks (Gureckis & Love, 2009). In our experiments, we parametrically manipulated the degree of perceptual aliasing aﬀorded by certain perceptual cues in a similar task. Our empirical results and simulations show how the ability of the learner improves as relevant states in the world uniquely map to diﬀerentiated percepts. The results provide further support for the model of sequential decision making proposed by Gureckis & Love (2009) and highlight the important role that state representations may have on behavior in dynamic decision making and learning tasks.
The Incredibly Simple Way to Get Drivers to Buy Fuel Efficient Cars	2014-05-16	Brad Tuttle \| Time Business	CRED in the News
The Interdisciplinary Challenges of Climate Change Research	2010-01-01	Balstad, R. \| World Social Science Report, pp. 210-212	Publications
The international impact of the day after tomorrow.	2005	Leiserowitz, A. \| Environment, 47(3), 41-44	Publications
The moral complexity of climate change and the need for a multidisciplinary perspective on climate ethics	2015-06-01	Grasso, M., Markowitz, E. \| Climatic Change 130(3): 327-334	Publications	Abstract:
The MPG Illusion	2008-07-07	Larrick, R.P., & Soll, J.B. \| Science, 320 (5883): 1593-1594.	Publications	Summary: Using "miles per gallon" as a measure of fuel efficiency leads people to undervalue the benefits of replacing the most inefficient automobiles. 10.1126/science.1154983
The next energy revolution won’t be in wind or solar. It will be in our brains.	2015-01-22	Chris Mooney \| The Washington Post	CRED in the News
The past, the present & some possible futures of adaptation.	2009-06-01	Orlove, B. \| In Adger, W.N., Lorenzoni, I. & O'Brien, K. (Eds.) Adapting to climate change: thresholds, values, governance. Cambridge University Press, (pp. 131-163)	Publications	Summary: Adapting to climate change is a critical problem facing humanity. This involves reconsidering our lifestyles, and is linked to our actions as individuals, societies and governments. This book presents top science and social science research on whether the world can adapt to climate change. Written by experts, both academics and practitioners, it examines the risks to ecosystems, demonstrating how values, culture and the constraining forces of governance act as barriers to action. As a review of science and a holistic assessment of adaptation options, it is essential reading for those concerned with responses to climate change, especially researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and graduate students. Significant features include historical, contemporary, and future insights into adaptation to climate change; coverage of adaptation issues from different perspectives: climate science, hydrology, engineering, ecology, economics, human geography, anthropology and political science; and contributions from leading researchers and practitioners from around the world.
The Place of Glaciers in Natural and Cultural Landscapes (Chapter 1).	2008-02-01	Orlove, B.S., Wiegandt, E., & Luckman, B. \| In Orlove, B.S., Wiegandt, E., & Luckman, B. (Eds.) Darkening Peaks: Glacier Retreat, Science and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.	Publications	ISBN: 9780520253056
The Politics of Uncertainty and the Fate of Forecasters	2012-06-01	Taddei, R. \| Ethics, Policy and Environment, 15 (2), 252-267	Publications
The politics of uncertainty and the fate of forecasters: climate, risk and blame in Northeast Brazil	2009	Taddei, R., \| In Jankovic, V. & Barboza, C. (Eds.) Weather, Local Knowledge and Everyday Life: Issues in Integrated Climate Studies. Rio de Janeiro: MAST	Publications	Abstract: Using ethnographic data from rural Northeast Brazil, this article explores, firstly, how climate uncertainties are interconnected to processes of accountability and blame, and, secondly, how this connection affects the activity of climate forecasting. By framing climate events in ways that downplay the inherent uncertainties of the atmosphere, political discourses on various scales, as well as religious narratives, create a propitious context for the enactment of what I call accountability rituals. Forecasters seem to attract to themselves a great deal of the collective anxieties related to climate, and are very often blamed for the negative impact of climate events. This blaming may take place in a variety of ways, and has a range of practical results: from real physical violence to attacks on the authority and legitimacy of forecasters, by way of ridicule and jokes. I conclude by suggesting that, on the one hand, the study of the social uses of climate-related uncertainties offers special opportunities for understanding how human societies deal with uncertainty and blame; and that, on the other hand, a better understanding of these issues is necessary to improve relations between climate forecasting and the societies where it takes place – the latter being a key issue in the processes of understanding and adapting to climate change.
The Power of Third Person Plural on Support for Public Policies	2014-10-31	Tom Jacobs \| PS Magazine	CRED in the News
The problem with Earth Day? Human psychology	2015-04-22	Chris Mooney \| The Washington Post	CRED in the News
The Profits of Doom	2014-04-16	George Black \| OnEarth Magazine	CRED in the News
The Rise of Ocean Optimism	2016-06-08	Elin Kelsey \| SMITHSONIAN.COM	CRED in the News
The Role of Climate Perceptions, Expectations, and Forecasts in Farmer Decision Making: The Argentine Pampas and South Florida	2004-11-01	Hansen, J., Marx, S. & Weber, E. \| IRI Technical Report 04-01	Publications, Reports	Introduction: Skillful seasonal climate forecasts reduce climatic uncertainty, but reduce livelihood risk to farmers only if the uncertainty associated with the forecast is accurately communicated and understood, and integrated into the decision process. Of the various determinants of application of seasonal forecast and resulting benefit to farmers, those related to content, communication and understanding are most under the influence of the forecast provider. Improved understanding of how target decision makers perceive and apply probabilistic climate information can inform the design of climate forecast information products and presentation protocols.
The Role of Subsidies in Coordination Games with Interconnected Risk	2014-02-17	Gong, M., Heal, G., Krantz, D., Kunreuther, H., and Weber, E. (2014) \| Journal of Behavioral Decision Making	Publications	Abstract: Can subsidies promote Pareto-optimum coordination? We found that partially subsidizing the cooperative actions for two out of six players in a laboratory coordination game usually produced better coordination and higher total social welfare with both deterministic and stochastic payoffs. Not only were the subsidized players more likely to cooperate (choose the Pareto-optimum action), but the unsubsidized players increased their expectations on how likely others would cooperate, and they cooperated more frequently themselves. After removal of the subsidy, high levels of coordination continued in most groups with stochastic payoffs but declined in deterministic ones. This carry-over disparity between the deterministic and stochastic settings was consistent with the economic theories that agents were more likely to keep the status quo option under uncertainty than without uncertainty. Hence, players with stochastic payoffs were more likely to keep the high coordination level (status quo) brought by the subsidy in the previous subsidy session. A post-game survey also indicated that with stochastic payoffs, players focused on risk reduction. Temporary subsidies promoted lasting coordination because even after subsidy was removed, players still assumed that others players would prefer reduced risks from cooperation. With deterministic payoffs, however, the subsidy might crowd out other rationales for coordination, with many players indicating that the subsidy was the only reason for anyone to cooperate. Hence, the coordination level dropped when the subsidy was removed.
The surprising top water wasters in your home, and how to fix them	2014-03-04	Scott Martelle \| The LA Times	CRED in the News
The wisdom of crowds: Predicting a weather and climate-related event	2013-03-01	Hueffer, K., Fonseca, M.A., Leiserowitz, A., Taylor, K.M. \| Journal of Judgment and Decision Making , 8(2), 91-105	Publications	Abstract: Environmental uncertainty is at the core of much of human activity, ranging from daily decisions by individuals to long-term policy planning by governments. Yet, there is little quantitative evidence on the ability of non-expert individuals or populations to forecast climate-related events. Here we report on data from a 90-year old prediction game on a climate related event in Alaska: the Nenana Ice Classic (NIC). Participants in this contest guess to the nearest minute when the ice covering the Tanana River will break, signaling the start of spring. Previous research indicates a strong correlation between the ice breakup dates and regional weather conditions. We study betting decisions between 1955 and 2009. We find the betting distribution closely predicts the outcome of the contest. We also find a significant correlation between regional temperatures as well as past ice breakups and betting behavior, suggesting that participants incorporate both climate and historical information into their decision-making.
There’s a surprisingly strong link between climate change and violence	2014-10-22	Chris Mooney \| The Washington Post	CRED in the News
Thinking about legacy makes people greener	2015-01-09	The British Psychological Society	CRED in the News
This Factor Predicts What People Think About Climate Change	2015-07-27	Justin Worland \| Time	CRED in the News
This is a wake-up call – don’t hit the snooze button	2012-11-06	State of the Planet: Earth Institute Blog	CRED in the News
This Is What It Feels Like to Watch a Glacier Vanish	2015-08-11	Jeremy Deaton \| Climate Nexus	CRED in the News
Tipping Climate Negotiations.	2012-02-01	Heal, G., and Kunreuther, H. \| In R.W. Hahn, & Ulph, A. (Eds.), Climate Change and Common Sense: Essays in Honour of Tom Schelling (Chapter 4). Oxford University Press.	Publications	Abstract: Thinking about tipping provides a novel perspective on finding a way forward in climate negotiations and suggests an alternative to the current framework of negotiating a global agreement on reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Recent work on non-cooperative games shows games with increasing differences have multiple equilibria and have a “tipping set,” a subset of agents who by changing from the inefficient to the efficient equilibrium can induce all others to do the same. We argue that international climate negotiations may form such a game and so have a tipping set. This set is a small group of countries who by adopting climate control measures can make in the interests of all others to do likewise. Publisher's page
Tipping Points: CRED co-sponsored TippingPoint event at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO)	2009-12-08	The CUNY Institute for Sustainable Cities Blog	CRED in the News
To Change Environmental Behavior, Should We Really Tell People the World Is Ending?	2013-09-03	Hal Hershfield, Elke Weber	CRED in the News
To cooperate or not to cooperate: Using new methodologies and frameworks to understand how affiliation influences cooperation in the present and future	2012-08-01	Arora, P., Peterson, N.D., Krantz, D.H., Hardisty, D.J., & Reddy, K.S. \| Journal of Economic Psychology, 33: 842-853	Publications	Abstract: How can changes in degrees of group affiliation or identity change one’s decision to cooperate or defect in a dilemma? According to the logic of appropriateness, decision changes result from changes in answer to the question, “what does a person like me do in a situation like this?” In two studies, transient group affiliation is systematically manipulated to test its influence on the appropriateness question both in the present and future. Novel methodologies (videotaping group interactions to obtain observed levels of group affiliation, implicit measures of social concept activation and aspect listing protocols) were used to obtain a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying the influence of group affiliation. Increases in group affiliation are accompanied by increases in the accessibility of social constructs, higher levels of cooperation, personal satisfaction and trust in one’s group. Similar patterns are observed for decisions in the present and future. There is an order effect observed with decisions to cooperate in the future carrying over to subsequent decisions to cooperate in the present, but a decision to initially cooperate in the present does not translate as strongly to a decision to cooperate in the future. This is in part because a more analytical approach is used for decisions pertaining to the future, while decisions in the present tend to be more affect-based.
To Encourage Positive Environmental Outcomes, Emphasize a Long Future, Not Impending Doom	2013-09-26	NYU Stern	CRED in the News
To Get People to Buy Insurance, Change How You Talk About Risk	2014-09-22	Howard Kunreuther, Robert Meyer, Erwann Michel-Kerjan \| BusinessWeek	CRED in the News
Today's Weather Affects People's Beliefs on Global Warming Trends	2014-01-14	Nature World News	CRED in the News
Towards usable climate science: research supporting provision of regional climate services	2013-12-01	Podestá, G. P., Hidalgo, C. Berbery, E.H. \| CLIVAR Exchanges , No. 63, 18(3), pp. 28 -33	Publications
Translated attributes as a choice architecture tool: trick and treat	2013-05-30	Camilleri, A. R., Ungemach, C., Johnson, E. J., Larrick, R. P., & Weber, E. U. (2013) \| In Salisbury, L. & Seiders, K. (Eds.) 2013 Marketing and Public Policy Conference Proceedings 15-16	Publications
Understanding the Best Ways to Conserve Water	2014-03-03	Kathleen Lees \| Science World Report, 2014-03-03	CRED in the News
Understanding the causes and consequences of differential decision-making in adaptation research: Adapting to a delayed monsoon onset in Gujarat, India	2015-03-01	Jain, M., Naeem, S., Orlove, B., Modi, V. , DeFries, R.S. \| Global Environmental Change, 31:98-109	Publications	Abstract: Weather variability poses numerous risks to agricultural communities, yet farmers may be able to reduce some of these risks by adapting their cropping practices to better suit changes in weather. However, not all farmers respond to weather variability in the same way. To better identify the causes and consequences of this heterogeneous decision-making, we develop a framework that identifies (1) which socio-economic and biophysical factors are associated with heterogeneous cropping decisions in response to weather variability and (2) which cropping strategies are the most adaptive, considering economic outcomes (e.g., yields and profits). This framework aims to understand how, why, and how effectively farmers adapt to current weather variability; these findings, in turn, may contribute to a more mechanistic and predictive understanding of individual-level adaptation to future climate variability and change. To illustrate this framework, we assessed how 779 farmers responded to delayed monsoon onset in fifteen villages in Gujarat, India during the 2011 growing season, when the monsoon onset was delayed by three weeks. We found that farmers adopted a variety of strategies to cope with delayed monsoon onset, including increasing irrigation use, switching to more drought-tolerant crops, and/or delaying sowing. We found that farmers’ access to and choice of strategies varied with their assets, irrigation access, perceptions of weather, and risk aversion. Richer farmers with more irrigation access used high levels of irrigation, and this strategy was associated with the highest yields in our survey sample. Poorer farmers with less secure access to irrigation were more likely to push back planting dates or switch crop type, and economic data suggest that these strategies were beneficial for those who did not have secure access to irrigation. Interestingly, after controlling for assets and irrigation access, we found that cognitive factors, such as beliefs that the monsoon onset date had changed over the last 20 years or risk aversion, were associated with increased adaptation. Our framework illustrates the importance of considering the complexity and heterogeneity of individual decision-making when conducting climate impact assessments or when developing policies to enhance the adaptive capacity of local communities to future climate variability and change.
Understanding the Disconnect on Global Warming	2009-02-20	Association for Psychological Science	CRED in the News
Understanding the Mind as the Temperature Climbs	2011-06-28	State of the Planet	CRED in the News	Profile piece featuring CRED Director David Krantz
Unequal Information, Unequal Allocation: Bargaining Field Experiments in NE Brazil		Pfaff, A., Velez, M.A., Taddei, R., Broad., K. \| Environmental Science & Policy, (26), 90-101	Publications	Abstract: We assess how unequal information affects the bargaining within resource allocation, a stakeholder interaction that is critical for climate adaptation within the water sector. Motivated by water allocation among unequal actors in NE Brazil, within Ceara´ State, we employ ‘ultimatum’ ﬁeld experiments in which one participant lacks information. We ﬁnd that, despite having veto power,the less informed are vulnerable to inequity. When all are informed, we see a typical resource split (60% initiator–40% responder) that balances an initiator’s advantage witha responder’s willingness to punishgreed.Wheninstead responders have only a resource forecast upon which to base decisions, the fully informed initiators get 80% of resources for conditions of resource scarcity. Thus, despite each of the stakeholder types having an unquestioned ‘seat atthe table’, information asymmetries make bargaining outcomes more unequal. Our results are widely relevant for adaptation involving the joint use of information, and suggest that equity can rise with dissemination of scientiﬁc outputs that are integral in adaptation.
University of Minnesota Researcher to lead a $12M research network to build sustainable, healthy, and livable cities	2015-08-11	University of Minnesota	CRED in the News
Value of perfect ENSO phase predictions for agriculture: evaluating the impact of land tenure and decision objectives	2009-05-06	Letson, D., Laciana, C. , Bert, F. E., Weber, E.U., Katz, R. W., González, X. I., & Podestá, G. P. \| Climatic Change, 97: 145-170. Doi: 10.1007/s10584-009-9600-8.	Publications	Abstract: In many places, predictions of regional climate variability associated with the El Niño–Southern Oscillation phenomenon offer the potential to improve farmers’ decision outcomes, by mitigating the negative impacts of adverse conditions or by taking advantage of favorable conditions. While the notion that climate forecasts are potentially valuable has been established, questions of when they may be more or less valuable have proven harder to resolve. Using simulations, we estimate the expected value of seasonal climate information under alternative assumptions about (a) land tenure (ownership vs. short-term leases) and (b) the decision maker’s objective function (expected utility vs. prospect theory value function maximization), employing a full range of plausible parameter values for each objective function. This allows us to show the extent to which the value of information depends on risk preferences, loss aversion, wealth levels and expectations, as well as situational constraints. Our results demonstrate in a non-laboratory decision context that, in some cases, psychologically plausible deviations from expected utility maximization can lead to substantial differences in estimates of the expected value of climate forecasts. Efforts to foster effective use of climate information and forecasts in agriculture must be grounded in a firm understanding of the goals, objectives and constraints of decision makers. 10.1007/s10584-009-9600-8
Value typology in cost-benefit analysis	2012-11-01	Baum, S.D. \| Environmental Values, 21 (4), 499-524, 2012-11-01	Publications	Abstract: Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) evaluates actions in terms of negative consequences (costs) and positive consequences (benefits). Though much has been said on CBA, little attention has been paid to the types of values held by costs and benefits. This paper introduces a simple typology of values in CBA and applies it to three forms of CBA: the common, money-based CBA, CBA based in social welfare, and CBA based in intrinsic value. The latter extends CBA beyond its usual anthropocentric domain. Adequate handling of value typology in CBA avoids analytical mistakes and connects CBA to its consequentialist roots.
Video of Elke Weber and Eric Johnson at Digital Life Design Conference	2013-07-16	Digital Life Design Conference	CRED in the News
Want to save water? Toilets have greatest impact	2014-03-03	Science Daily	CRED in the News
Water Sustainability: Anthropological Approaches & Prospects.	2010-10-01	Orlove, B. & Caton, S.C. \| Annual Review of Anthropology, 39 401-15	Publications	Abstract: Water has become an urgent theme in anthropology as the worldwide need to provide adequate supplies of clean water to all people becomes more challenging. Anthropologists contribute by seeing water not only as a resource, but also as a substance that connects many realms of social life. They trace the different forms of valuing water, examine the often unequal distribution of water, explore the rules and institutions that govern water use and shape water politics, and study the multiple, often conflicting knowledge systems through which actors understand water. They offer ethnographic insights into key water sites—watersheds, water regimes, and waterscapes—found in all settings, though with widely varying characteristics. Anthropologists provide a critical examination of a concept called integrated water resource management (IWRM), which has become hegemonic in the global discourse of sustainable development.
Watered-down democratization: modernization versus social participation in water management in Northeast Brazil.	2010	Taddei, R. \| Agriculture and Human Values, DOI 10.1007/s10460-010-9259-9	Publications
Watts up? People habitually underestimate their energy consumption	2010-08-19	The Economist	CRED in the News	Press featuring research published by CRED postdoc and Earth Institute Fellow Shahzeen Attari.
We want to save water, but do we know how?	2014-03-03	Phys.org	CRED in the News
We want to save water, but do we know how?	2014-03-03	Science Codex	CRED in the News
Weather Changes People’s Climate Beliefs, Study Finds	2014-01-14	Headlines & Global News	CRED in the News
Web conferencing as a viable alternative method to face-to-face interaction in group decision research	2012-09-01	Handgraaf, M. J. J., Schuette, P., Yoskowitz, N. A., Milch, K. F., Appelt, K. C., & Weber, E. U. \| Judgment and Decision Making, 7 (5), 659-668	Publications	Abstract: Studying group decision-making is challenging for multiple reasons. An important logistic difﬁculty is studying a sufﬁciently large number of groups, each with multiple participants. Assembling groups online could make this process easier and also provide access to group members more representative of real-world work groups than the sample of college students that typically comprise lab Face-to-Face (FtF) groups. The main goal of this paper is to compare the decisions of online groups to those of FtF groups. We did so in a study that manipulated gain/loss framing of a risky decision between groups and examined the decisions of both individual group members and groups. All of these dependent measures are compared for an online and an FtF sample. Our results suggest that web-conferencing can be a substitute for FtF interaction in group decision-making research, as we found no moderation effects of communication medium on individual or group decision outcome variables. The effects of medium that were found suggest that the use of online groups may be the preferred method for group research. To wit, discussions among the online groups were shorter, but generated a greater number of thought units, i.e., they made more efﬁcient use of time.
What Anthropologists Can Do About Climate	2013-06-03	Ben Orlove, State of the Planet Blog, Earth Institute	CRED in the News
What shapes perceptions of climate change?	2010-05	Weber, E.U. \| WIREs Climate Change, Vol. 1, May/June 2010	Publications	Abstract: Climate change, as a slow and gradual modification of average climate conditions, is a difficult phenomenon to detect and track accurately based on personal experience. Insufficient concern and trust also complicate the transfer of scientific descriptions of climate change and climate variability from scientists to the public, politicians, and policy makers, which is not a simple transmission of facts. Instead, worldview and political ideology, two elements of the cultural context of decisions, guide attention toward events that threaten the desired or existing social order, and shape expectations of change, which in turn guide the detection and interpretation of climate events. Action that follows from climate change perceptions can be informed by different processes. Affect‐based decisions about climate change are unlikely to motivate significant action, as politicians and the general public are not particularly worried about climate risks, and because attempts to scare people into greater action may have unintended negative consequences. Analysis‐based decisions are also unlikely to result in significant action, because of large discounting of uncertain future costs of climate risks compared to the certain and immediate costs of climate change mitigation. Rule‐based decisions that determine behavior based on moral or social responsibility may hold out the best prospects for sustainable action. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
What the World Thinks of Climate Change	2015-07-27	David Funkhouser \| State of the Planet	CRED in the News
What Will You Leave Behind? How Personal Legacy Affects Pro-environmental Behavior	2015-01-08	Courtney St. John \| Earth Institute State of the Planet	CRED in the News
When It Comes To Going Green, People Want Smaller Gains Now, Not Bigger Gains Later	2009-07-29	Science Daily	CRED in the News
Who counts, what counts: representation and accountability in water governance in the Upper Comoé sub-basin, Burkina Faso	2016-07-05	Roncoli, C., Dowd-Uribe, B., Orlove, B., West, C.T., Sanon, M. \| Natural Resources Forum 10.1111/1477-8947.12095	Publications	Abstract: This article examines the unfolding of integrated water resource management (IWRM) reforms in southwest Burkina Faso, where water resources are subject to conflicting claims by a diversity of users. We first describe the establishment a local water user committee, showing how choices regarding composition and operations grant varying levels of recognition to different stakeholders. We then discuss the implications for key dimensions of decentralized governance, namely representation and accountability. In particular we focus on: (a) how the interplay of political agendas and policy disconnects shapes the committee's viability and credibility and (b) how tensions between techno-scientific and local knowledge affect participation and transparency. We argue that in contexts defined by contentious politics and neo-patrimonial practices, representativeness is better ensured by the direct inclusion of user groups rather than elected officials. Though limited discretionary power, information access, and technical capabilities of committee members inhibit accountability, rural producers uphold their claims through social mobilization and reliance on local knowledge. Recognizing the opportunities offered by the country's recent democratic turn, we formulate recommendations aimed at addressing structural drivers and enabling citizen agency in decentralized water governance. At the same time, further research is needed on local people's understandings of representation and accountability, to ensure that they are involved in institutional design and practices in ways that affirm what they value and what they know.
Why adapting to climate change is so difficult	2014-03-31	Adriene Hill \| Marketplace	CRED in the News
Why Chinese Discount Future Financial and Environmental Gains but not Losses More Than Americans		Gong, M., Krantz, D., and E. Weber (under review) \| Journal of Risk and Uncertainty	Publications
Why Communicating About Climate Change Is so Difficult: It's 'The Elephant We're All Inside of'	2015-02-05	Jim Pierobon \| Huffington Post	CRED in the News
Why do People Care about the Sea Lion? – A Fishing Game to Study the Value of Endangered Species	2013-12-12	Gong, M., and Heal, G. (2013) \| Environmental and Resource Economics	Publications	Abstract: Previous research proposes that human beings are motivated to protect endangered species for various reasons: consumptive use value, non-consumptive use value, non-use value, and intrinsic value. However, it has been difficult to tease apart these values at the behavioral level. Using an innovative fishing game, we study an important tradeoff between one kind of use value (monetary value) and one kind of non-use value (existence value) of the endangered Steller sea lion. In the fishing game, players make repeated decisions on how much pollock to harvest for profit in each period in a dynamic ecosystem. The population of the endangered sea lion depends on the population of pollock, which in turn depends on the harvesting behavior of humans. The data show that in general, people responded to the financial value (as a tourist resource), but not the existence value, of the sea lion by cutting down commercial fish harvesting to keep more sea lions in the ecosystem. However, not all people behaved the same regarding the existence value. Females displayed a higher existence value than males, as did people who reported stronger pro-environmental attitudes than those with weaker pro-environmental attitudes. Our findings have multiple implications on public opinion elicitation and public policy design.
Why Isn’t the Brain Green?	2009-04-16	The New York Times Magazine	CRED in the News
Why Modern Human Beings Aren't Built to Grasp Climate Change	2013-11-07	WLRN Miami	CRED in the News
Why Thinking About Your Death May Prompt You to Save the Planet	2012-07-04	Time Magazine, Ecocentric Blog	CRED in the News	CRED Principal Investigator Rick Larrick and colleagues as the Duke Fuqua School of Business co-authored the study cited in this post.
Why Weather Affects Climate Change Belief	2014-01-13	Live Science	CRED in the News
Why You're in Denial About Disasters	2013-03-14	Fox Business	CRED in the News
Will talking change anyone's mind about climate change?	2009-11-06	The Christian Science Monitor	CRED in the News
With Fix for Flood Insurance Program Deficit Delayed, Now What?	2014-04-07	Insurance Journal	CRED in the News
Words versus Actions as a Means to Influence Cooperation in Social Dilemma Situations	2011-04-13	Pogrebna, G., Krantz, D., Schade, C. & Keser, C. \| Theory and Decision, 71(4)	Publications	Abstract: We use a sequential voluntary contribution game to compare the relative impact of a first-mover’s non-binding announcement versus binding commitment on cooperation. We find that a non-binding announcement and a binding commitment increase individual contributions to a similar extent. Since announced contributions systematically exceed commitments, in sessions with a non-binding announcement, second-movers tend to contribute more to the group activity than in sessions with a binding commitment. Yet, second-movers appear to be more motivated towards achieving a social optimum when the first-mover uses commitment. We also find that a non-binding announcement has a higher impact on individual propensity to cooperate than the ex post contribution of the first-mover. However, the failure to make announced contributions decreases cooperation even though the first-mover is reassigned in every period. 10.1007/s11238-011-9248-5
You Say Offset, I Say Tax? Study Suggests Labels and Political Affiliation May Influence Preferences	2010-01-12	Association for Psychological Science	CRED in the News	"Columbia University psychological scientists David J. Hardisty, Eric J. Johnson, and Elke U. Weber wanted to see how the way in which a concept is framed (that is, how it is labeled) affects our attitude towards it."
Your brain on climate change: why the threat produces apathy, not action	2014-11-10	Greg Harman \| The Guardian	CRED in the News
Your Brain on Natural Hazards	2013-03-13	Climate Access	CRED in the News
Your Water Footprint is Bigger Than You Realize	2015-04-28	Laura Bliss \| CityLab	CRED in the News
‘Chasing Ice’: Watching History Unfold, and Disappear	2013-04-26	Earth Institute State of the Planet	CRED in the News

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