Daniel A DeCaro

University of Louisville | UL · Psychological & Brain Sciences and Urban & Public Affairs

Public participation plays a role in the development and long-term maintenance of environmental institutions that are well-matched to local social–ecological conditions. However, the means by which public participation impacts such institutional fit remains unclear. We argue that one major reason for this lack of clarity is that analysts have not c...

Legal and institutional structures fundamentally shape opportunities for adaptive governance of environmental resources at multiple ecological and societal scales. Properties of adaptive governance are widely studied. However, these studies have not resulted in consolidated frameworks for legal and institutional design, limiting our ability to prom...

Conventional wisdom (rational choice theory) assumes that individuals are destined to collectively destroy vital ecological systems due to their narrow self-interest. In contrast, Humanistic Rational Choice Theory (HRCT) assumes individuals can cooperatively self-govern, devising effective conservation agreements and governance systems to constrain...

Compliance with health safety guidelines is essential during pandemics. However, political polarization in the U.S. is reducing compliance. We investigated how polarized perceptions of government leaders' autonomy-support and enforcement policies impacted security and internally-motivated compliance with national (Study 1a) and state (Study 1b) saf...

Individuals typically prefer the freedom to make their own decisions. Yet, people often trade their own decision control (procedural utility) to gain economic security (outcome utility). Decision science has not reconciled these observations. We examined how decision-makers’ efficacy and security perceptions influence when, why, and how individuals...

This is a science comic abstract summarizing the primary results of DeCaro, Janssen, & Lee's (2021) NSF funded research project applying Humanistic Rational Choice Theory to examine when and how communication in social dilemmas improves cooperation and self-governance to resolve those dilemmas. (Created in collaboration with Sequential Potential Co...

Society's most pressing problems involve social dilemmas, yet few individuals recognize and understand their core components. We examined how a serious social dilemma game used in an educational setting impacted understanding of a classic social dilemma, the tragedy of the commons. Participants (N = 186) were randomly assigned to one of two gamepla...

Individuals who hold moral convictions (i.e., hold beliefs that are seen as objective, universal truths) do not want to communicate or cooperate with individuals who hold opposing moral views and seem to devalue procedural justice, as they care only about the outcome aligning with their moral stance. Our findings suggest that is not always the case...

Helped facilitate discussions and critically evaluate weekly assigned readings with a senior undergraduate student at UofL. I also helped collect, analyze, and present preliminary data for the academic poster which was presented at the Undergraduate Arts & Research Showcase.

Rubbertown, located in West Louisville, Kentucky, USA, is a highly industrialized area with several chemical and materials manufacturing plants. For decades, residents in the area have experienced continuous air pollution problems. City monitoring and enforcement of pollution has improved recently, after residents and non-government organizations p...

This codebook provides concepts and methodologies for coding and quantifying the content and function of communication in group social dilemma experiments, specifically with a social and ecological component (e.g., common pool resource dilemma). The content that is coded pertains to such categories as small talk, humor, information exchange (e.g.,...

Work on procedural utility suggests that decision makers derive more value from outcomes earned with freedom of choice. We experimentally tested tradeoffs between procedural and outcome utility, examining financial losses as an important boundary condition. Participants completed a simulated consumer sales task (Exp. 1) or card task (Exp. 2) with o...

Free course syllabus for an undergraduate course in interdisciplinary decision science.

Rational choice theory is the cornerstone for scholarship about societal cooperation, and the primary inspiration for public policy governing societal commons. However, current behavioral theories cannot explain several important questions about cooperation or harness the brighter potential of human nature for societal benefit. Departing from narro...

This chapter introduces Humanistic Rational Choice Theory (HRCT), an interdisciplinary behavioral theory of cooperation and compliance, to explain several fundamental questions about compliance illustrated by the case studies in this book. For example, why do self-interested stakeholders voluntarily comply, self-regulate, and cooperate to solve sha...

Environmental governance systems must adapt to address increased uncertainty and new social-ecological conditions posed by stressors like climate change. This chapter presents several principles of social cognition and decision-making that influence adaptive governance. The principles are illustrated with examples from six US river basins. Future r...

Adaptation to major social and ecological changes requires the participation, innovation, social learning, and political deliberation of many stakeholders, doing many different governance activities at different scales. Legal and institutional systems set the ground rules for this governance activity, establishing boundaries and opportunities for w...

One of the goals of adaptive governance is to increase management flexibility in the face of a changing social-ecological system. In contrast, one of the key functions of governance systems is to provide stability, predictability, and security for the people subject to that system. This chapter explores this adaptive governance paradox, focusing on...

Law dictates the structure, boundaries, rules, and processes within which governmental action takes place and in doing so becomes one of the focal points for analysis of governmental barriers to adaptation as the effects of climate change are felt. Governance encompasses both governmental and nongovernmental participation in collective choice and a...

The Anacostia watershed traverses the urban-suburban areas around Washington, D.C., and Maryland. Historically, the Anacostia River basin has transitioned from a biologically rich natural ecology prior to European settlement through three periods of ecosystem degradation due to agriculture and navigation, industrialization, and urbanization. The cu...

Several frameworks have been developed to assess the resilience of social-ecological systems, but most are time consuming and require substantial time and technical expertise. Stakeholders and practitioners often lack the resources for such intensive efforts. Furthermore, most resilience assessments end with problem framing and fail to explicitly a...

Several frameworks have been developed to assess the resilience of social-ecological systems, but most require substantial data inputs, time, and technical expertise. Stakeholders and practitioners often lack the resources for such intensive efforts. Furthermore, most end with problem framing and fail to explicitly address trade-offs and uncertaint...

STEM undergraduate classrooms are increasingly adopting instructional methods to enhance student engagement and improve learning outcomes. For example, in exploratory learning, students explore novel problems before they are taught the underlying concepts and procedures. The current studies examined the benefits of exploratory learning in undergrad...

Adaptive governance must work “on the ground,” that is, it must operate through structures and procedures that the people it governs perceive to be legitimate and fair, as well as incorporating processes and substantive goals that are effective in allowing social-ecological systems (SESs) to adapt to climate change and other impacts. To address the...

Environmental governance systems are under greater pressure to adapt and to cope with increased social and ecological uncertainty from stressors like climate change. We review principles of social cognition and decision making that shape and constrain how environmental governance systems adapt. We focus primarily on the interplay between key decisi...

The term "governance" encompasses both governmental and nongovernmental participation in collective choice and action. Law dictates the structure, boundaries, rules, and processes within which governmental action takes place, and in doing so becomes one of the focal points for analysis of barriers to adaptation as the effects of climate change are...

We used psychological methods to investigate how two prominent interventions, participatory decision making and enforcement, influence voluntary cooperation in a common-pool resource dilemma. Groups (N=40) harvested resources from a shared resource pool. Individuals in the Voted-Enforce condition voted on conservation rules and could use economic s...

This article develops a new framework -- the institutional-social-ecological dynamics framework (ISED) -- to assess the relationships among institutional change, societal change, and ecological change in evaluating the current and likely future resilience of a small, Eastern, urban-suburban watershed: the Anacostia River watershed in DC and Marylan...

Exploratory learning before instruction can benefit understanding, but can also be challenging. Individual differences in response to challenge, such as achievement motivation, may therefore moderate the benefits of exploratory learning. Higher mastery orientation generally leads to increased effort in response to challenge, whereas higher performa...

The United Nations (2009) lists the eradication of poverty, oppression of women, and inadequate education, health and child care – causes to which community psychology is inextricably devoted – as among the world’s most pressing social issues. Using natural resource conservation as a stepping stone, conservationists have recently begun to develop c...

Until recently, the constraints imposed on decision makers by the human physical condition - situated both as a physical agent and within physical space - have played only an incidental, if not entirely inconsequential, role in conceptualizations of human decision making. The act of deciding has been positioned as the quintessence of traditional de...

Community-based natural resource conservation programs in developing nations face many implementation challenges underpinned by social-psychological mechanisms. One challenge is garnering local support in an economically and socially sustainable fashion despite economic hardship and historical alienation from local resources. Unfortunately, conserv...

The United States is currently struggling to resolve a number of highly contentious and potentially society-changing dilemmas, such as "gay" marriage, human genetic engineering, and universal healthcare. Rather than offer some ethical rubric with which to measure the moral worth of the particular contentions themselves, I attempt to resolve these d...