Tony Leiserowitz

Tony's research focuses on the role of experiential factors, such as emotion, metaphor, narrative, values, and cultural worldviews in environmental risk perception, decision-making and behavior. Recent work has examined public perceptions of global climate change through a series of national surveys, cross-cultural experimental studies, and an in-depth study of responses to climate change among the Inupiaq of northwest Alaska. Other recent work includes a global assessment of public values, attitudes and behaviors towards sustainable development. He has taught courses on the Human Dimensions of Global Climate Change, the Evolution of American Ideas of Nature, and Worldviews and Nature, which have each examined the variety of human responses to nature across cultures and over time, in an effort to understand the diverse ways human beings have perceived, interpreted and behaved toward the natural world. His personal relationship to the land was first formed on a mid-Michigan farm, deepened in Aspen, Colorado, and grounded in the rain soaked Pacific Northwest.