Publication

Impactful environmental psychology needs formal theories

Changing individual and collective behavior is critical to addressing the climate and ecological crisis. Environmental psychology is thus well-positioned to contribute knowledge to guide impactful climate action.

Author

Anne E. Urai, Fabian Dablander, Jan Willem Bolderdijk

Date

11 December 2025

Links

ScienceDirect

The researchers argue that environmental psychology is not living up to its full potential, partly because its theories often remain verbal. Formalizing theories — expressing them in the precise language of mathematics or computer code — is especially important to give substance to thinking about complex systems, where nonlinearities and feedback loops make the effect of interventions hard to predict. Formal theories increase conceptual clarity and mechanistic understanding, advance cumulative science, enable ‘in silico’ intervention testing, and improve integration into policy-relevant models. We illustrate how environmental psychologists can start incorporating theory formalization in their work.