http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rprb20/6/1#.VZqe0rU8t8E

FROM THE GUEST EDITORS / EDITORIAL

A changing world: coping with environmental, social and economic risks / Un mundo en transformación: afrontando riesgos

ambientales, sociales y económicos

Fátima Bernardoa,b, Rui Gaspara,c, and Vivianne Visschersd

aDepartment of Psychology – University of Évora; bUniversidade de Lisboa (CESURCERIS-

IST); cInstituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIS, ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação

e Intervenção Social (CIS); dETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions,

Consumer Behavior

‘At a time when disaster potential is on the increase, the coping mechanisms of

many societies appear to have become less effective. In parallel with a rise in

hazard potential, vulnerability has increased […]. Given these recent challenges,

the world is in urgent need of organizing a concerted effort to deal with systemic

risks’ (Renn, 2008, p. 62).

Today’s complex and systemic nature of risks has increasingly dissipated the

traditional boundaries between risk assessment, risk perception and social coping

mechanisms (Renn, 2008). Individuals and societies are now faced with multiple

risks in their everyday lives, that although being different in nature — environmental,

social, economic, … — may demand integrated individual and social

responses to cope with them. In accordance, changes in one dimension (e.g.,

environmental) may determine changes in other dimensions (e.g., social, economic)

and associated risks can emerge. However, the effect of these changes

goes beyond a simple additive effect of each of them. Given that changes occur in

a system, a risk that emerges in one dimension may pose a threat or a challenge to

the entire system and may interact with processes that may take place at other

dimensions, motivating responses in the form of individual and social coping.

On one side, looking at these individual and social coping responses to risks

provides a ‘snapshot’ of the way individuals and society deal with everyday risks

and what type of resources can be provided, to potentiate successful coping. In

fact, these responses are diagnostic of the entire system, being informative of the

current and future ways of dealing with demands, through a multi-level process

that takes place across several time scales (Skinner, 2007). On the other side,

looking at coping responses to risks also allows us to assess the way risks are

perceived and the resources individuals and society perceive to have, to cope with them. This is because coping is determined by the way individuals perceive risks

and other aspects of the appraisal process (Weinstein, 1988).

These risks and their interaction with socio-demographic changes may lead to

an increasing vulnerability of social systems and governance structures (Brauch

et al., 2011; Lankao & Qin, 2011). In order to respond to this challenge new

strategies of both adaptation and mitigation are required, that integrate different

levels (local, regional and global), and different actors, populations, experts and

decision makers. It is necessary to investigate social patterns of vulnerability and

the coping strategies of many different societal groups. Moreover, we need new

and appropriate policies and regulations for the adaptation on the global, regional

and local level, and for different types of human contexts. These are challenges

that must encourage the researchers to look into new scientific approaches for

comprehensive and integrative problem solutions (Lahsen et al., 2010).

Understanding people’s coping strategies and the resources used to implement

them is therefore an important task for social scientists, not only to mitigate

current risks but also to prevent future and emergent risks. By doing this,

scientists, experts and other stakeholders can achieve the goal of enhancing

people’s adaptive processes. Hence, the study of coping with social, environmental

and economic risks should be put forward based on different but complementary

perspectives and multi-method approaches. With this goal in mind, this

special issue aimed at providing examples of different perspectives and methodologies

to investigate how people cope with various risks.

Accordingly, the authors of the articles in this special issue looked at coping

from different perspectives: from empirically testing the relation between an event

and coping with the event, over the validation of an instrument to measure coping,

to the development of a new framework on coping with risks. Moreover, different

methodological approaches were taken. In one of the empirical studies, the

authors were able to relate their coping measures to objective data: in a quasiexperiment,

Luís, Neves, and Palma-Oliveira (this issue) investigated coping with

a newly constructed hydro dam among residents of different villages, over time.

Moreover, the authors related residents’ coping to the objective differences

between the villages. In addition, Böhm and Pfister (this issue) used an experimental

design to investigate whether information on the consequences of a choice

or information about the behaviour itself has a larger impact on coping with an

environmental risk.

The second set of papers has a more fundamental and future perspective.

Honold, Leandro, and van der Meer (this issue) aimed to develop and test a

scale to assess ambient stress. Their scale may be applied to investigate how

people deal with various environmental burdens. Last, Gaspar, Barnett, and Seibt

(this issue) suggest a framework to explain and predict how individuals respond to

social, health and environmental risks, thereby integrating the role of the social

environment.

All but one paper1 highlighted the importance of the social context when

coping with environmental or health risks. Both Gaspar et al. (this issue) and

Honold et al. (this issue) suggested that the social environment should be

considered and monitored to be able to adequately explain and predict individuals’

coping with a threat. People namely look at their peers and at important

others to see how they interpret and respond to a threat. Furthermore, the studies

by Luis et al. (this issue) pointed towards the importance of social contexts in

relation to place attachment and coping with environmental threats. Neighbours

may offer support to cope with a big environmental change and to protect oneself

against an environmental threat because they generate strong place attachment.

Moreover, neighbours can show people what preventive measures are appropriate

to do in the case of an environmental threat.

The authors also provided some implications for communication and management

of environmental threats. Firstly, people’s awareness of the threat and of its

deviation from the norm should be raised (Gaspar et al., this issue). Secondly,

drawing attention to the future consequences of one’s behaviour appeared to be

most promising to induce behaviour change (Böhm & Pfister, this issue).

In sum, although coping may appear to be a one-dimensional concept, the

papers in this special issue show that it can be approached from very different

views and various methodological angles. Such multi-method approaches are

needed to get a better understanding of how people cope with various threats.

We hope this special issue will encourage the readers to apply the methods,

findings and suggestions provided here so that the research on coping can be

deepened and broadened.

References /

Brauch, H. G., Oswald Spring, Ú., Mesjasz, C., Grin, J., Kameri-Mbote, P., Chourou, B. Birkmann, J. (Eds.). (2011). Coping with global environmental change, disasters and security: Threats, challenges, vulnerabilities and risks. Berlin: Springer.

Lahsen, M., Sanchez-Rodriguez, R., Romero Lankao, P., Dube, P., Leemans, R., Gaffney, O.  Smith, M. S. (2010). Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to global environmental change: Challenges and pathways for an action-oriented research agenda for middle-income and low-income countries. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 2, 364–374. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2010.10.009

Lankao, P. R., & Qin, H. (2011). Conceptualizing urban vulnerability to global climate and environmental change. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 3, 142– 149. doi:10.1016/j.cosust.2010.12.016

Renn, O. (2008). Risk governance: Coping with uncertainty in a complex world. London: Earthscan.

Skinner, E. (2007). Coping assessment. In S. Ayers, A. Baum, C. McManus, S. Newman, K. Wallston, J. Weinman, & R. West (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of psychology, health and medicine (2nd ed. pp. 245–250). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Weinstein, N. D. (1988). The precaution adoption process. Health Psychology, 7, 355– 386. doi:10.1037/0278-6133.7.4.355