Joseph Arvai, Ph.D.
Joe Arvai is an associate research scientist at Decision Research, and he is the Dana and David Dornsife Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychology, and the Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies at the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California. Joe’s research has two main areas of emphasis: First, his research is focused on advancing our understanding of how people process information and make decisions, with a specific emphasis on the interplay between cognitive and affective modes of judgment. Second, Joe and his team conduct research focused on developing and testing decision aiding tools that can be used by people to improve decision quality across a wide range of environmental, social, and economic contexts. These decision support systems can be classified as active (in that they decompose complex problems into more cognitively manageable parts) or passive (in that they modify human behavior in self-interested directions without modifying people’s decision-making tendencies). In addition to his research, Joe is a member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board, and is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Environmental Change and Society.
Recent Publications
Arvai, J., & Rivers, L. (Eds.). (2014). Effective risk communication. New York: Routledge
Arvai, J., D. Kellon, R. León, R. Gregory, and R. Richardson. (2014). Structuring international development decisions: Confronting tradeoffs between land-use and community development in Costa Rica. Environmental Systems and Decisions, 34: 224-236.
Campbell-Arvai, V., J. Arvai, and L. Kalof. (2014). Motivating sustainable food choices: The role of nudges, value orientation, and information provision. Environment and Behaviour, 46: 453-475.
Palen, W.J., T.D. Sisk, M.E. Ryan, J.L. Arvai, M. Jaccard, A. Salomon, T. Homer-Dixon, and K.P. Lertzman. (2014). Consider the full impacts of oil-sands development. Nature, 510: 465-467.
Arvai, J. and K. Post. (2012). Risk management in a developing country context: Improving decisions about point-of-use water treatment among the rural poor in Africa. Risk Analysis, 32: 67-80.
