Decisions Matter: Why and How We Make Choices that Impact the Environment

Many decisions made by individuals, households, and other groups have personal, social, and economic consequences, but also impact the environment. I will review the special challenges in making such decisions, where costs and benefits often vary in their certainty and time of arrival, and where outcomes are typically affected not just by our own choices but also those of others. We will see that there are numerous cognitive and emotional barriers to people's ability to make such decisions wisely. I will then move to a more positive topic, and review the multiple ways in which people have been shown to acquire, represent, and process information about their choice options and arrive at decisions. I will argue that a better understanding of the abundance of goals that motivate people's choices and of the ways in which they arrive at their decisions provides entry points to the design of decision environments that help people, households, and other groups make decisions with which they will be more satisfied in the long run and that have better social and environmental consequences.