Social norms and global environmental challenges: The complex interaction of behaviors, values, and policy

Kinzig, A.P. and Ehrlich, P.R. and Alston, L.J. and et al, . (2013) Social norms and global environmental challenges: The complex interaction of behaviors, values, and policy. BioScience, 63 (3). pp. 164-175.

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Abstract

Government policies are needed when people's behaviors fail to deliver the public good. Those policies will be most effective if they can stimulate long-term changes in beliefs and norms, creating and reinforcing the behaviors needed to solidify and extend the public good. It is often the short-term acceptability of potential policies, rather than their longer-term efficacy, that determines their scope and deployment. The policy process should include a consideration of both timescales. The academy, however, has provided insufficient insight on the coevolution of social norms and different policy instruments, thus compromising the ability of decisionmakers to craft effective solutions to the society's most intractable environmental problems. Life scientists could make fundamental contributions to this agenda through targeted research on the emergence of social norms

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: behavioral science, sustainability, assessments, interdisciplinary science, ethics
Author Affiliation: Professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University, in Tempe
Subjects: Environmental Science
Divisions: Other Crops
Depositing User: Ms K Syamalamba
Date Deposited: 02 Jul 2013 03:10
Last Modified: 02 Jul 2013 03:10
Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/bio.2013.63.3.5
URI: http://eprints.icrisat.ac.in/id/eprint/10781

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