As direct and indirect costs of fires continue to grow, so too might motivation to invest more heavily in mitigation.

Crises faced by regional or national governments are usually caused by either natural or human disasters or by the actions of terrorists or other nations. Decision making in the face of a crisis is difficult because the context typically is complex, and decision makers often have insufficient time or information to thoughtfully make decisions that will manage the crisis well. As a result, they often rely on brief discussions and past experiences that omit key dimensions of the crisis, which results in selection of an inferior response alternative. This article describes concepts and procedures to guide the initial phases of planning for crises so that if and when a crisis occurs, a proactively developed framework provides a sound foundation for quickly structuring decisions and implementing more detailed analyses in advance of taking specific crisis-response actions. Case-study examples are used to illustrate three main elements of our suggested approach: identifying the main dimensions of the decisions to be faced, articulating the objectives that are to be achieved, and generating a set of potentially desirable alternatives to best achieve these objectives. Although the decision analysis and behavioral science methods that we rely on are not novel, proactive structuring of crisis decisions that likely will need to be made quickly has been given only limited attention by analysts and decision makers. Improved recognition of the importance of decision-focused proactive planning should result in better decisions when a crisis occurs, leading to a reduction in the adverse consequences for countries and their citizens. Funding: This work was supported by Ben Delo and Longview Philanthropy.

Written for parents, teachers, and others who live or work with teenagers, this science-based guide describes how you can become a confident 'decision mentor.' Learn to support young people in making good decisions for themselves. Treating decision making as an essential and learnable skill, the six-step 'Decision-Maker Moves' highlight the power and promise of young people as they shape their lives through the options they choose. Stories, examples, and practical tips show how decisions can transform problems into opportunities. Each chapter provides common-sense advice on when and how to talk with teenagers as they weigh up the often-conflicting values, emotions, and trade-offs affecting their choices. We cannot provide young minds with all the answers, but we can help them as they navigate both life-changing and everyday decisions.

This paper makes the case for adults in children’s lives to incorporate the science of decision-making skills as a pedagogy for social emotional learning (SEL), the process through which humans acquire a set of five core competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (CASEL, 2020). Choices require learners to activate the first four SEL components while being explicit about the fifth, which can be an inclusive protocol for teaching and practicing SEL. The interdisciplinary decision and behavioural sciences (Kahneman, 2003) offer many insights into why a structured decision-making process can help youth move strategically through a choice to create new opportunities and develop their social emotional development while avoiding common missteps (which decrease social emotional development). Missteps are likely in more common approaches such as pros and cons lists, vague directives to “stop and think,” and voting. In terms of collaborative decisions, the decision sciences illustrate how approaches based on understanding values and being curious about others’ perspectives can help to build choices that embrace diversity and minimize polarizing reliance on misinformation. Models of collaborative structured decision-making, in particular, help teachers encourage their students to embrace transformative SEL oriented towards social justice, positioning diversity within groups as a necessary asset in reaching a quality decision (Jagers et al., 2019). The incorporation of a plain-language, science-based framework, such as the one detailed in this paper, provides a foundation for students to responsibly make minor decisions and significant decisions, all while explicitly and implicitly developing their social emotional skills.

Compensation for damages can and should address social and cultural impacts.

Crisis decisions made by governments typically involve either natural and humanitarian disasters or actions of terrorists or other nations. Making quality decisions for such crises requires a thorough understanding of the objectives to be achieved, the range of alternatives to consider, and their potential consequences. However, once a crisis decision is recognized, the available time to develop such an understanding is often severely limited. This article provides concepts and procedures to help senior policy makers identify in advance the key foundational components of crisis decisions. Then, when a crisis occurs that requires a quick response, the proactively constructed decision foundation provides the basis to fine-tune a specific response quickly. As a result, more of the available time can be focused on important aspects of the specific decision that could not have been examined earlier. This decision-focused proactive preparation should lead to better informed crisis decisions with better consequences for our nation and its citizens.

Although the need for urgent climate change action is clear, insights about how to make better climate risk management decisions are limited. While significant attention from behavioral researchers has focused on choice architecture, we argue that many of the contexts for addressing climate risks require increased attention to the needs of a deliberative and dynamic choice environment. A key facet of this kind of decision is the need for decision-makers and stakeholders to identify and balance conflicting economic, social and environmental objectives. This recognition of difficult, context-specific trade-offs highlights the need for structuring the decision-making process so that objectives are clearly articulated and prioritized. Equally, policy analyses and deliberations must effectively link priorities with climate risk management options. This restructuring of decision-making about climate change calls for more than a nudge. Scientific and technical efforts must be redirected to help stakeholders and decision-makers better understand the diverse implications of climate change management alternatives and to become better equipped to take actions commensurate with the urgency of the problem.

Social scientists and community advocates have expressed concerns that many social and cultural impacts important to citizens are given insufficient weight by decision makers in public policy decision-making. In two large cross-sectional surveys, we examined public perceptions of a range of social, cultural, health, economic, and environmental impacts. Findings suggest that valued impacts are perceived through an initial lens that highlights both tangibility (how difficult it is to understand, observe, and make changes to an impact) and scope (how broadly an impact applies). Valued impacts thought to be less tangible and narrower in scope were perceived to have less support by both decision makers and the public. Nearly every valued impact was perceived to have more support from the public than from decision makers, with the exception of three economic considerations (revenues, profits, and costs). The results also demonstrate that many valued impacts do not fit neatly into the single-category distinctions typically used as part of impact assessments and cost-benefit analyses. We provide recommendations for practitioners and suggest ways that these results can foster improvements to the quality and defensibility of risk and impact assessments.

Novel management interventions intended to mitigate the impacts of climate change on biodiversity are increasingly being considered by scientists and practitioners. However, resistance to more transformative interventions remains common across both specialist and lay communities and is generally assumed to be strongly entrenched. We used a decision-pathways survey of the public in Canada and the United States (n = 1490) to test two propositions relating to climate-motivated interventions for conservation: most public groups are uncomfortable with interventionist options for conserving biodiversity and given the strong values basis for preferences regarding biodiversity and natural systems more broadly, people are unlikely to change their minds. Our pathways design tested and retested levels of comfort with interventions for forest ecosystems at three different points in the survey. Comfort was reexamined given different nudges (including new information from trusted experts) and in reference to a particular species (bristlecone pine [Pinus longaeva]). In contrast with expectations of public unease, baseline levels of public comfort with climate interventions in forests was moderately high (46% comfortable) and increased further when respondents were given new information and the opportunity to change their choice after consideration of a particular species. People who were initially comfortable with interventions tended to remain so (79%), whereas 42% of those who were initially uncomfortable and 40% of those who were uncertain shifted to comfortable by the end of the survey. In short and across questions, comfort levels with interventions were high, and where discomfort or uncertainty existed, such positions did not appear to be strongly held. We argue that a new decision logic, one based on anthropogenic responsibility, is beginning to replace a default reluctance to intervene with nature.

Impact evaluations in North America are required to examine not only the economic, environmental, and health effects of activities but also their social and cultural impacts. In practice, however, many important social and cultural effects are often neglected as part of court-sponsored negotiations and decisions by government regulators because they are not represented in terms of economic markets, specific to the decision context, or lack standard measures. This omission is especially significant when determining compensation for Indigenous communities due to restrictions placed on their fundamental connection to traditional lands and the negative impacts on language, governance, social systems, and well-being that rely on the maintenance of shared, place-based practices. We propose a comprehensive, multiattribute approach for estimating compensation to Indigenous communities and summarize results from a case-study application in two Indigenous Dene Nations. In a final section we discuss the broader implications of adopting a more accurate depiction of impacts and a consistent, principles-based approach to calculating compensation payments that is more respectful of the losses experienced over time by many Indigenous communities as the result of encroachments onto their traditional territories.

In addition to evaluating the economic, ecological, and health impacts of major public policy initiatives, impact assessments typically also need to identify and evaluate an action's social and cultural (S/C) impacts. A wide range of S/C metrics have been suggested, and guidelines exist to help ensure their thoughtful and comprehensive development. Nevertheless, many of the S/C concerns identified as part of impact assessments remain vague, are difficult to measure or understand, and are more closely attuned to existing data than to concerns expressed by stakeholders or residents of Indigenous communities. Furthermore, S/C impacts are often deemphasized or, in some cases, outright ignored during project generation and as part of final decisions made by elected officials. Here, we examine the promise of well-designed S/C metrics and contrast it with the reality of how they are commonly deployed, with specific reference to four case studies in North America: municipal planning decisions in Oregon, wildlife decisions in Ohio, renewable energy decisions in Michigan, and pipeline decisions in the western United States and Canada. We argue the importance of moving beyond assessment to decision making, pointing out five reasons why critical S/C impacts are often neglected, and presenting recommendations for the design of clearer, more comprehensive metrics that will contribute to more socially responsive policy choices.

The adoption of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies at a scale sufficient to draw down carbon emissions will require both individual and collective decisions that happen over time in different locations to enable a massive scale-up. Members of the public and other decision-makers have not yet formed strong attitudes, beliefs and preferences about most of the individual CDR technologies or taken positions on policy mechanisms and tax-payer support for CDR. Much of the current discourse among scientists, policy analysts and policy-makers about CDR implicitly assumes that decision-makers will exhibit unbiased, rational behaviour that weighs the costs and benefits of CDR. In this paper, we review behavioural decision theory and discuss how public reactions to CDR will be different from and more complex than that implied by rational choice theory. Given that people do not form attitudes and opinions in a vacuum, we outline how fundamental social normative principles shape important intergroup, intragroup and social network processes that influence support for or opposition to CDR technologies. We also point to key insights that may help stakeholders craft public outreach strategies that anticipate the nuances of how people evaluate the risks and benefits of CDR approaches. Finally, we outline critical research questions to understand the behavioural components of CDR to plan for an emerging public response.

Determinations of significance play a pivotal role in environmental impact assessments because they point decision makers to the predicted effects of an action most deserving of attention and further study. Impact predictions are always subject to uncertainty because they rely on estimates of future consequences. Yet uncertainty is often neglected or treated in a perfunctory manner as part of the characterization, evaluation, and communication of anticipated consequences and their significance. Proposals to construct fossil fuel pipelines in North America provide a highly visible example; casual treatment of how uncertainty affects significance determinations has resulted in poorly informed stakeholders, frustrated industry proponents, and inconsistent choices on the part of public decision makers. Using environmental assessments for recent pipeline proposals as examples, we highlight five ways in which uncertainty is often neglected when determining impact significance and suggest that a mix of known methods, new guidelines, and appropriate oversight could greatly improve current practices.

Decisions to intervene in a foreign country to prevent genocide and mass atrocities are among the most challenging and controversial choices facing national leaders. Drawing on techniques from decision analysis, psychology, and negotiation analysis, we propose a structured approach to these difficult choices that can provide policy makers with additional insight, consistency, efficiency, and defensibility. We propose the use of a values-based framework to clarify the key elements of these complex choices and to provide a consistent structure for comparison of the likely benefits, risks, and tradeoffs associated with alternative intervention strategies. Results from a workshop involving Ambassadors and experienced policy makers provide a first test of this new method for clarifying intervention choices. A decision-aiding framework is shown to improve the clarity and relevance of intervention deliberations, laying the groundwork for a more comprehensive and clearer understanding of the threats and opportunities associated with various intervention options.

The power of visual imagery is well known, enshrined in such familiar sayings as "seeing is believing" and "a picture is worth a thousand words." Iconic photos stir our emotions and transform our perspectives about life and the world in which we live. On September 2, 2015, photographs of a young Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, lying face-down on a Turkish beach, filled the front pages of newspapers worldwide. These images brought much-needed attention to the Syrian war that had resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and created millions of refugees. Here we present behavioral data demonstrating that, in this case, an iconic photo of a single child had more impact than statistical reports of hundreds of thousands of deaths. People who had been unmoved by the relentlessly rising death toll in Syria suddenly appeared to care much more after having seen Aylan's photograph; however, this newly created empathy waned rather quickly. We briefly examine the psychological processes underlying these findings, discuss some of their policy implications, and reflect on the lessons they provide about the challenges to effective intervention in the face of mass threats to human well-being.

Inclusivity is widely considered a requirement of defensible environmental risk consultations and is often either mandated or recommended to help ensure attention to stakeholders' diverse views. Experience suggests the opposite: the emphasis on an inclusive consultation process often makes it impossible for decision makers to listen carefully to stakeholders and for citizens' views to influence the design and choice of proposed actions. This paper briefly reviews the promise of environmental risk consultations before outlining several of the more serious problems associated with an emphasis on inclusivity: long lists of undifferentiated concerns, facts tainted by stakeholders' perspectives and worldviews, little access to clarifying dialogue or tests of expertise, few opportunities to scrutinize knowledge quality, avoidance of controversial issues, and an overwhelming abundance of information. As a result, the promotion of inclusivity often serves as a convenient excuse for decision makers to silence citizens by substituting quantity for quality, breadth for depth, and an adversarial approach for dialogue and informed understanding.

This article addresses the difficulties of incorporating uncertainty about consequence estimates as part of stakeholder deliberations involving multiple alternatives. Although every prediction of future consequences necessarily involves uncertainty, a large gap exists between common practices for addressing uncertainty in stakeholder deliberations and the procedures of prescriptive decision-aiding models advanced by risk and decision analysts. We review the treatment of uncertainty at four main phases of the deliberative process: with experts asked to describe possible consequences of competing alternatives, with stakeholders who function both as individuals and as members of coalitions, with the stakeholder committee composed of all stakeholders, and with decisionmakers. We develop and recommend a model that uses certainty equivalents as a theoretically robust and practical approach for helping diverse stakeholders to incorporate uncertainties when evaluating multiple-objective alternatives as part of public policy decisions.