Research Program on Environment and Behavior

The Environment and Behavior Program (E&B) supports interdisciplinary research on interactions between human populations and their natural and technological environments, with an interest in policy formulation and evaluation. Natural environments include the entire set of natural resources, the environmental media, and natural hazards such as earthquakes and floods. Applied research on impacts and mitigation of natural hazards has a long tradition in the Institute of Behavioral Science; natural hazards studies and information dissemination are the special domain of the Natural Hazards Center, an integral unit of the E&B Program.

E&B faculty researchers conduct research on critical issues of economic livelihood, resource management institutions, and environmental sustainability in the United States and developing countries. (Pictured: E&B Program faculty, students, and staff.) The theoretical orientation that guides most, but not all, of the research is political ecology, and it incorporates perspectives from anthropology, economics, sociology, and geography. Of particular interest is the use of natural resources in regions that are undergoing rapid economic transformations. These transformations often lead to environmental degradation, cultural deterioration, and the loss of livelihoods for many members of the local societies. By focusing on the processes of individual and group decision-making with respect to natural resources, as well as examining the influence of local, national, and international institutions on these decision processes, E&B offers a unique research perspective on human-environmental processes.

The Program's current focus includes three research themes that reflect collaborative goals and specific expertise of the faculty. These are: 1) economic globalization and liberalization; 2) design of the institutional framework for natural resources management and environmental policy formulation, with concern for the divergent trends among broader systems analysis, more localized decision-making, and the role of markets, and 3) the intersections among demographic change, livelihood options, and environmental integrity. Two major research initiatives are underway that incorporate the research themes in two major regions. The first involves a rigorous examination of issues related to water resources in the American West. This research examines how water transfers have benefitted certain segments of society, but have also contributed to rural poverty; other research explores how climate change will impact access to water resources and how regulatory agencies utilize climate information. The second initiative examines livelihood diversification, demography, and environmental integrity in the East African savannas. (Pictured: J. Terrence McCabe, Acting Program Director.) Although the ways in which African savanna environments are used and managed are undergoing rapid changes, little research has examined the underlying causes or the social, economic, and ecological implications of these shifts in livelihood and managerial strategies. Social scientists from E&B, as well as collaborators from other U.S. and African universities, are engaged in a Tanzania case study with intent to expand the geographic scope of the research in the near future. All the research conducted in the Environment and Behavior Program encourages the participation of multi-disciplinary teams of faculty, as well as of students at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

The Environment and Behavior Program provides outreach to campus departments and the larger Boulder environmental research community through its regular Seminar Series. The series focuses on environmental and natural resource issues, bringing together scholars and policy makers from campus and the community. The Environment and Behavior Program continues to be a locus of innovative theoretical and applied social science research relating to the use and management of the country's and the world's natural resources.

See Selected Research Findings from the Environment and Behavior Program.