Environmental Decision Making by Individuals and Groups

This research will examine the relative advantages and disadvantages of having decisions made by an individual or by a group. The research focuses on environmental decisions, an important and complex class of decisions that involve uncertainty, consequences that are realized at different and often distant points in time, and conflicting goals (short- vs. long-term, individual vs. collective, material vs. moral/ethical, cooperative vs. competitive). We will examine the quality of individual vs. group decision processes and outcomes for such complex choice situations and investigate the effect of group composition, in particular of group variation in psychological traits known to affect decision making and of group variation in the way members receive decision-relevant information. We make a (new) distinction of potential practical importance, namely between predecided groups whose members have considered a problem or decision individually before deliberating it as a group and naive groups who are considering a problem or decision for the first time in the group setting. We will also examine the effect of cross-cultural differences in attitudes and values on group decision processes and outcomes, by conducting a subset of studies in multiple countries, including the US, the Netherlands, and Argentina. A recent issue of Psychological Science in the Public Interest (Kozlowski Ilgen 2006) highlights the ubiquity of work groups and the importance of improving group effectiveness. The proposed research will suggest (a) what types of decisions benefit from being made by groups rather than individuals, (b) how group decisions are affected by the composition and preparation of the group, (c) how group decision processes can be improved as a result of a better understanding of these dynamics, and (d) how these improvements can be implemented in the field. Our results can also improve the effectiveness of participatory processes in environmental decisions, which is something several organizations, including the World Bank, have recently called for, with the hope that they lead to greater efficiency of decisions and broader empowerment of stakeholders. While participatory processes can have such outcomes, more needs to be known about how group interactions of typically heterogeneous stakeholders affect decision processes and whether, when, and how participation is a useful tool.