Research
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The Social Ecology Lab includes research scholars from across campus, as well as collaborators from nonprofits, community organizations, foundations, and elsewhere. Our backgrounds span the range of social sciences with an emphasis on interdisciplinary perspectives on social-ecological systems and work from the local to the ecoregional scales. We employ a mix of approaches including ethnography, interviews, network analysis, mapping, photovoice, and more to seek quantitative and qualitative insights into complex environmental and social conditions.
Core Areas of Research
- Environmental Behavior (Individual & Collective): The lab investigates why people participate—or do not participate—in pro-environmental behaviors. We look beyond individual choices to understand how, and under what conditions, social units coordinate and communicate to act as a collective whole on behalf of the environment.
- The Power of "Place": A central theme is exploring how psychological, cultural, and biophysical connections to place(s) motivate people to protect those environments. We explore place connections in a range of contexts, from ecotourists and fishers in Galapagos and Palau, crabbers in the Chesapeake Bay, and daily commuters at Stanford.
- Transformation Science: Through leadership of the Transformation Science Program, the lab is engaged in efforts to consider how shifts in views, structures, and practices can catalyze sustainability transformations. Drawing on transdisciplinary action research, this work brings together scholars, practitioners, policymakers, and funders to study and implement strategies for transformative change that are scalable and transferable across contexts.
- Connection to Nature: Lab members are investigating the evolving construct of connectedness to nature, examining how people experience, conceptualize, and deepen their relationship with the natural world. Our work addresses how connection to nature is defined and measured across contexts, and how these connections support environmental behaviors, personal wellbeing, and community cohesion.
- Environmental Justice & Participation: We explore longstanding structural, political, and cultural inequities in conservation practices, with particular attention to whose voices are included and excluded from decision making processes, who has power and privilege in certain settings, and how legacies of colonialism and exclusion influence today’s conservation choices and opportunities.
- Environmental Learning: We conduct research in both "ordinary" (neighborhoods, workplaces, farmers’ markets, schools) and "extraordinary" (national parks, museums, aquariums) settings to better understand the ways in which lifelong learning contributes to environmental behaviors.