Coping with and Communicating Uncertainty - Climate Change and Water Governance: Adaptive Capacity in Chile and Switzerland - page 315

studies have espoused (Brunner 1996 ; Keeney and McDaniels 2001 ; Nordhaus
1994 ) embrace many of the learning based elements promoted in the resilience
based disciplines of adaptive management, adaptive co-management and adaptive
governance (Folke et al. 2002 ; Pahl-Wostl et al. 2007a ; Huntjens et al. 2011 ) .
In addition to lessons that can be drawn from other discourses in the social sci-
ences that advocate that decision making on climate change issues should better
account for uncertainty and climate impacts, a great deal of value and insight could
also be added to the debate by looking towards other disciplines that rest at the
intersection of technology, economics and psychology. The fields of behavioural
economics and commercial marketing are increasingly being employed within the
wider sustainability discourse to better understand motivational behaviour and the
psychology of decision making as it relates to economic or other choices (Sutherland
2011 ). The challenge of overcoming apathy in developing adaptive capacity was
identified in both the Swiss and Chilean cases, in relation to actors' perceived inabil-
ity to cope with the long term impacts of climate change. Not only would a focus on
the shorter term and mid-range, impacts help generate manageable options to mid-
term climate impacts, but motivational tools from the fields of advertising, market-
ing and business (Sutherland 2011 ; Wales 2011 ) might also be employed to stimulate
adaptation planning.
The cross-disciplinary field of behavioural economics (Jackson 2005 ; Pomykala
2005 ) inherently recognises a broader set of human limitations and potential in the
evaluation and framing of choices than traditionally recognised by neoclassical econo-
mists, with its total focus on the utility function (Rabin 1998 ) . As Mullainathan and
Thaler ( 2001 ) summarised, humans deviate from the standard economic model in three
key ways. The 'bounded rationality reflects the limited cognitive abilities that constrain
human problem solving. Bounded willpower captures the fact that people sometimes
make choices that are not in their long-run interest. Bounded self-interest incorporates
the comforting fact that humans are often willing to sacrifice their own interests to help
others' (Mullainathan and Thaler 2001 , p 1). Increasingly, such empirical findings on
motivational factors for choice building are being applied by NGOs in the field of
advocating for sustainability, particularly in relation to sustainable consumption, cli-
mate change mitigation and environmental protection (Crompton 2008 ; Dawnay and
Shah 2005 ; Jackson 2005 ; Kaplan 2000 ; Wheatley and Frieze 2006 ) .
New Economics Foundation reports have suggested that policy makers should
better leverage the role that other people's behaviour plays in changing a particular
form of behaviour (Dawnay and Shah 2005 ), as they draw from the work of Malcolm
Gladwell ( 2000 ) on 'mavens', 'connectors' and 'salesmen'. Each category relates to
a small group of people that can have significant impacts on changing the behaviour
of individuals' behaviours. 1 In other areas, their report proposes means of taking
1 Mavens are people who have such expert knowledge that you would take their advice if given it (and
Mavens enjoy giving it for free). The Connectors have many connections, so information they have
has the potential to be distributed to a large number of people. The Salesmen are people with the
power to persuade us to change our behaviour. Policy-makers may find it useful to focus their efforts
to create behaviour change on these specific types of people who will help promote wider change.