Joseph Árvai

  • Director, Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies
  • Dana and David Dornsife Professor of Psychology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences
Office: (213) 821-9597

Expertise Summary

Expert on how the public, business leaders, and policy makers think and make decisions about environmental issues and sustainability; this includes climate change, natural hazards like floods and forest fires, consumer products, etc.

Expertise

  • Climate change
  • Energy
  • Forest and wildland fire
  • Endangered species
  • Crime
  • Terrorism
  • COVID-19 and pandemics
  • Environmental policy
  • Hurricanes and extreme weather
  • Flooding
  • Contaminated sites
  • Agriculture and food security
  • Fake news and misinformation
  • Risk perception and management
  • Carbon sequestration and carbon capture
  • Green consumer behavior

Languages

  • English
  • Hungarian

Additional Information

  • Additionally, he provides expertise in situations where people’s instinctive approach to judgment and decision-making — such as their perceptions of risk and benefit — is biased by unchecked emotions and motivated reasoning.
  • An internationally recognized leader in research on judgment and decision-making about sustainability and the environment.
  • Joe and his lab of post-doctoral researchers and graduate students, conduct experiments aimed at improving our understanding of how people intuitively make judgments and decisions about environmental issues and sustainability.
  • Joe’s lab also conducts R&D tools and approaches that can be used by consumers, policymakers, and business leaders to improve decision quality across a broad range of environmental, social, and economic contexts.
  • Advisor to the government, business, and NGOs.
  • A former member of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Chartered Science Advisory Board, and the U.S. National Academy of Sciences’ Board on Environmental Change and Society.
  • Advised CEOs, State and Provincial leaders, government agencies and their leaders, and presidential candidates.