Climate change necessitates major changes in infrastructure siting, design, and operations. Successful adaptation of infrastructure management requires overcoming thorny institutional challenges including path dependency and isomorphic pressures that inhibit major shifts in norms and practices. Hazards have been posited as a potential trigger for changing long-standing institutions because they can upend stable system states. However, research on the ability of hazards to shift norms and practices is still nascent and focuses on rapid-onset disasters like floods, hurricanes, or fires.

Policymakers typically seek to account for tradeoffs in infrastructure decision-making with technical tools like multicriteria decision-analysis, life cycle assessment, and large-scale ecological models. However, while much attention is paid to mechanistic connections between interrelated infrastructure (e.g., effects on streamflow, water temperature, or agricultural runoff), the complex dependencies between water, energy, and food infrastructure pose political and social tradeoffs that extend far beyond engineering considerations.

We conduct experiments in multi-generational social dilemmas in which we examine the transmission of individual behaviors within and among groups of experimental participants. These experiments allow us to observe the cultural evolution of cooperation over time, including the roles of institutions, communication, and social learning. We conduct computerized experiments in a lab at UC Davis as well as online experiments using Mechanical Turk.

The goal of the study is to understand how local agricultural sustainability programs, also known as "partnerships," in three American Viticultural Associations (Lodi, Napa Valley, San Luis Obispo) influence growers' social networks and adoption of sustainable agriculture practices. The primary research task is a grower survey that asks about practice adoption and program participation; we are also conducting a survey of outreach advisers such as extension advisers and viticultural consultants throughout the state.

This projects investigates the role of social networks and social influence in travel behavior. Sustainable transportation programs may benefit from the incorporation of social influence through knowledge sharing, establishment of behavioral norms and peer-to-peer participation recruitment. The next phase of this ongoing research will involve evaluation of social influence as a tool in pilot sustainable transportation programs.

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his project examines agriculture and climate change with a focus on both mitigation and adaptation. In particular, we are looking at the variables that influence farmer and agricultural industry adoption of climate change mitigation and adaptation practices. Multiple factors will affect the adoption and innovation of practices in agriculture for mitigation and adaptation to climate change including information sources, climate change perceptions, policy structures, land management strategies, and economic and market drivers.

Project collaborators include UC Davis Department of Plant Sciences Project Scientist Sat Darshan Khalsa & Professor Patrick Brown. 

This project examines farmer decision-making in the context of disease management, including the influences of policy, learning, cooperation, economic factors, and individual characteristics. We are using semi-structured interviews, quantitative surveys, and behavioral experiments to better understand farmer decision-making with respect to the adoption of preventative disease-management practices in wood-canker diseases of grape, pistachio, and almond.