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AbstractRecently, growing earthquake activity in the northeastern Netherlands has aroused considerable concern among the 600,000 provincial inhabitants. There, at 3 km deep, the rich Groningen gas field extends over 900 km2 and still contains about 600 of the original 2,800 billion cubic meters (bcm). Particularly after 2001, earthquakes have increased in number, magnitude (M, on the logarithmic Richter scale), and damage to numerous buildings. The man‐made nature of extraction‐induced earthquakes challenges static notions of risk, complicates formal risk assessment, and questions familiar conceptions of acceptable risk. Here, a 26‐year set of 294 earthquakes with M ≥ 1.5 is statistically analyzed in relation to increasing cumulative gas extraction since 1963. Extrapolations from a fast‐rising trend over 2001–2013 indicate that—under "business as usual"—around 2021 some 35 earthquakes with M ≥ 1.5 might occur annually, including four with M ≥ 2.5 (ten‐fold stronger), and one with M ≥ 3.5 every 2.5 years. Given this uneasy prospect, annual gas extraction has been reduced from 54 bcm in 2013 to 24 bcm in 2017. This has significantly reduced earthquake activity, so far. However, when extraction is stabilized at 24 bcm per year for 2017–2021 (or 21.6 bcm, as judicially established in Nov. 2017), the annual number of earthquakes would gradually increase again, with an expected all‐time maximum M ≈ 4.5. Further safety management may best follow distinct stages of seismic risk generation, with moderation of gas extraction and massive (but late and slow) building reinforcement as outstanding strategies. Officially, "acceptable risk" is mainly approached by quantification of risk (e.g., of fatal building collapse) for testing against national safety standards, but actual (local) risk estimation remains problematic. Additionally important are societal cost–benefit analysis, equity considerations, and precautionary restraint. Socially and psychologically, deliberate attempts are made to improve risk communication, reduce public anxiety, and restore people's confidence in responsible experts and policymakers.

Internationally, national risk assessment (NRA) is rapidly gaining government sympathy as a science‐based approach toward prioritizing the management of national hazards and threats, with the Netherlands and the United Kingdom in leading positions since 2007. NRAs are proliferating in Europe; they are also conducted in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States, while regional RAs now exist for over 100 Dutch or British provinces or counties. Focused on the Dutch NRA (DNRA) and supported by specific examples, summaries and evaluations are given of its (1) scenario development, (2) impact assessment, (3) likelihood estimation, (4) risk diagram, and (5) capability analysis. Despite the DNRA's thorough elaboration, apparent weaknesses are lack of stakeholder involvement, possibility of false‐positive risk scenarios, rigid multicriteria impact evaluation, hybrid methods for likelihood estimation, half‐hearted use of a "probability × effect" definition of risk, forced comparison of divergent risk scenarios, and unclear decision rules for risk acceptance and safety enhancement. Such weaknesses are not unique for the DNRA. In line with a somewhat reserved encouragement by the OECD (Studies in Risk Management. Innovation in Country Risk Management. Paris: OECD, 2009), the scientific solidity of NRA results so far is questioned, and several improvements are suggested. One critical point is that expert‐driven NRAs may preempt political judgments and decisions by national security authorities. External review and validation of major NRA components is recommended for strengthening overall results as a reliable basis for national and/or regional safety policies. Meanwhile, a broader, more transactional concept of risk may lead to better national and regional risk assessments.

Section I. Multi-Attribute Utility -- Editors' Introduction -- Experimental Applications of Multi-Attribute Utility Models -- Multi-Attribute Utility Theory: Models and Assessment Procedures -- How We Can Use the Notion of Semi-Orders to Build Outranking Relations in Multi-Criteria Decision Making -- Multi-Criteria Decision Making: Comments on Jacquet-Lagrèze's Paper -- An Investigation of Subjective Preference Orderings for Multi-Attributed Alternatives -- Section II. Subjective Probability -- Editors' Introduction -- Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases -- A Structural Theory of Uncertain Knowledge -- Subjective Probability Forecasting: Some Real World Experiments -- A Three-Step Procedure for Assigning Probabilities to Rare Events -- Section III. Probability in Courtroom Decision Making -- Editors' Introduction -- Probabilities and the Law -- Probabilistic Analysis of Identification Evidence -- Juror Decisions and the Determination of Guilt in Capital Punishment Cases: A Bayesian Perspective -- Section IV. Some Alternative Views on Decision Behavior -- Editors' Introduction -- Utility, Welfare, and Probability: An Unorthodox Economist's View -- Search Behavior in Non-Simultaneous Choice Situations: Satisficing or Maximizing? -- Decision Time as a Function of Task Complexity -- Decision Time and Task Complexity: Comments on Hogarth's Paper -- Section V. Dynamic Decision Making -- Editors' Introduction -- Research Paradigms for Studying Dynamic Decision Behavior -- Dynamic Decision Behavior: Comments on Rapoport's Paper -- Section VI. Problems of Collective Decision Making -- Editors' Introduction -- Some Observations on Theories of Collective Decisions -- The Use of Decision Analysis in the Public Sector -- Index of Names -- Index of Subjects.

With our biosphere steadily degrading, a solid psychological perspective on environmental, social, and economic (un)sustainability is urgently needed. This should supplement and strengthen biological, technological, and economic perspectives. After discussing positivistic and constructive psychology, we summarize major environmental problems with their social and economic implications. We also compose some essential psychological reasoning about them, including the commons dilemma model, different behavioral processes and strategies of behavior change, and various aspects of human quality of life (QoL). Psychologists can help analyze and mitigate the biggest sustainability problems: population growth, resource-intensive consumption, and harmful technologies—if their research is well-tuned to other environmental sciences, if the incentive structure for this work is improved, and if more attention is paid to the collective side of human behavior.

In this study, the role of values in the field of household energy use is investigated by using the concept of quality of life (QOL). Importance judgments on QOL aspects could be summarized into seven clearly interpretable value dimensions. The seven value dimensions and general and specific environmental concern contributed significantly to the explanation of policy support for government regulation and for market strategies aimed at managing environmental problems as well as to the explanation of the acceptability of specific home and transport energy-saving measures. In line with earlier research, home and transport energy use were especially related to sociodemographic variables like income and household size. These results show that it is relevant to distinguish between different measures of environmental impact and different types of environmental intent. Moreover, the results suggest that using only attitudinal variables, Such as values, may be too limited to explain all types of environmental behavior.

In this study, the role of values in the field of household energy use is investigated by using the concept of quality of life (QOL). Importance judgments on 22 QOL aspects could be summarized into seven clearly interpretable value dimensions. The seven value dimensions and general and specific environmental concern contributed significantly to the explanation of policy support for government regulation and for market strategies aimed at managing environmental problems as well as to the explanation of the acceptability of specific home and transport energy-saving measures. In line with earlier research, home and transport energy use were especially related to sociodemographic variables like income and household size. These results show that it is relevant to distinguish between different measures of environmental impact and different types of environmental intent. Moreover, the results suggest that using only attitudinal variables, such as values, may be too limited to explain all types of environmental behavior.

It is often assumed that higher environmental concern goes with more positive attitudes toward environmental management strategies and more environmentally friendly behavior. Cultural theory argues this relationship is more complex. Cultural theory distinguishes four ways of life, involving distinct perceptions on environmental risks (so-called myths of nature), which are accompanied by preferences for specific management strategies. The results of this study suggest that environmental concern and myths of nature are overlapping constructs. Moreover, it appeared that respondents differing in environmental concern (as measured by the New Environmental Paradigm Scale and myths of nature) varied substantially in their preferences for environmental management strategies. Respondents with a high environmental risk concern had higher preferences for behavioral change strategies and government regulation, whereas respondents with a low environmental risk concern had higher preferences for market-oriented solutions. There was a tendency of technical strategies being more preferred by respondents with a low environmental concern.

Measures of proenvironmental behavior in psychological studies do not always reflect the actual environmental impact of a person or household. Therefore, the results of these studies provide little insight into variables that could be helpful in reducing household environmental impact. In this article, an environmentally significant measure of household consumer behavior (i.e., combined direct and indirect energy use) is presented and compared with a common social science measure of proenvironmental behavior (based on popular notions of environmentally significant behavior). Two large-scale field studies were conducted among representative samples of Dutch households. The results showed respondents who indicate they behave more proenvironmentally do not necessarily use less energy. Also, proenvironmental behavior is more strongly related to attitudinal variables, whereas household energy use is primarily related to variables such as income and household size. More multidisciplinary research seems necessary to identify variables that influence the actual environmental impact of household consumer behavior.