What Does Human Factors Research Have to do with Environmental Management?

Abstract

Human factors research has not focused much on the problem of environmental change and its management. The problem has many aspects that interrelate in complex ways. Its roots are in human behavior, so if approaches toward solutions are to be effective, they must involve modifying that behavior or mitigating its detrimental effects. A few suggestions of directions that human-factors efforts aimed at helping manage environmental change might take are made, but the main point of the paper is a plea for more discussion of the topic among human-factors researchers. Such discussion would result, it is assumed, in the identification of specific ways in which the field could contribute significantly to the development of solutions to the problem.