Psychology has particular insight and expertise with respect to many aspects of behaviourenvironment
linkages relevant to addressing environmental problems. These include:
a. Better understanding those factors which influence those individual, community, and
organisational appraisals, motivations, decision making, and behaviours both adversely impacting
on or directed toward protecting and conserving the natural environment;
b. Effectively changing awareness, perceptions, attitudes, understandings and behaviours relating
to the natural environment, adverse natural environmental impacts, and attributions of cause
and responsibility;
c. Sensitively measuring and monitoring changes in perceptions, motivations, attitudes, and
concerns relating to the natural environment;
d. The nature and role of media coverage and representations of environmental issues and
problems, and the nature and implications of social construction and social representation
processes with respect to environmental ‘problems’ and ‘solutions’;
e. The design and implementation of effective, persuasive communications, media coverage, and
educational materials concerning the nature, magnitude and causes of local and global risks and
threats, and what can be done, individually and collectively, to address such risks;
f. Better understanding, measuring, and monitoring individual and community perceptions and
appraisals of impacts on and changes to natural environments;
g. Delineating the neuro-mechanisms by which environmental toxins disrupt normal psychological
development and functioning;
h. Better understanding, identifying, and utilising the multiple psychological and health benefits of
proximate natural environments and natural ecosystem functioning and sustainability;
i. Better understanding, exploring, and fostering human connections and involvements with natural
environments and settings.
10. A priority matter for psychologists is to more effectively communicate those evidence-based
psychological research findings and models of particular relevance to fostering effective
behaviour change in the environmental context, and which are most effective in reducing adverse
environmental impacts, such as major consumer purchases , residential location, house purchase or
renovation, travel mode and patterns, or influencing more sustainable corporate and institutional
decision making and policies.
11. Changes in the social environment and human landscape relating to how changes in the natural
environment are perceived, understood, and responded to are as important to measure, monitor,
and address as are objective changes in the biophysical environment and natural ecosystems. These
perceptions, experience of, judgements about, and responses to perceived changes and impacts
in the natural environment constitute critically important psychosocial indicators and impacts of
environmental change and a critical but neglected area for identifying and developing meaningful
environmental indicators relating to impacts on and of the natural environment.
12. Environmental problems and challenges are complex and require collaborative, multidisciplinary,
‘ecological’, analyses and ‘solutions’. Psychology provides a particular and essential disciplinary
perspective to the effective addressing of environmental problems and sustainability issues, with
this contribution being most effective in the context of multidisciplinary teams working in applied,
policy relevant, programmatic contexts.
13. An important and specific contribution of psychology is with respect to clarifying public
understandings of ‘environmental’ problems and issues, the nature of their media coverage and
representation, and the science underlying what is, for many, a confusing arena of public concerns,
claims and counterclaims, uncertainty in the context of serious environmental threats, loss of
public confidence and trust, and clear political agendas. This situation requires the fostering of
better understandings of both psychological science and social science generally, for both the
lay and professional ‘public’, and the important and essential contribution these disciplines make
in ensuring informed and effective interventions and policy when addressing the human side of
environmental problems.