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.
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1 March 2013
Social Norms and Global Environmental Challenges: The Complex Interaction of Behaviors, Values, and Policy
Ann P. Kinzig,
Paul R. Ehrlich,
Lee J. Alston,
Kenneth Arrow,
Scott Barrett,
Timothy G. Buchman,
Gretchen C. Daily,
Bruce Levin,
Simon Levin,
Michael Oppenheimer,
Elinor Ostrom,
Donald Saari
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BioScience
Vol. 63 • No. 3
March 2013
Vol. 63 • No. 3
March 2013
assessments
behavioral science
ethics
interdisciplinary science
sustainability