103
change their crop production and land allocation on their farms. These individual
decisions by farmers may impact water demand due to changing crop production
patterns and have downstream effects on water quality from farmers’ input use.
Farmers’ production decisions may also affect international commodity markets
through price responses to changes in production levels.
Thus, a decision at the national level may affect individual decisions, with consequences for environmental quality and resource availability at multiple scales.
Neglecting any of these behavioral responses will lead to an incomplete understanding of the potential effects of a policy such as the RFS on local, national, and international systems.
As the above example illustrates, ignoring human behavior can lead to inaccurate
models of FEW systems. Simplifying human behavior can lead to similar results.
Much of the work that incorporates human behavior and decision-making includes
assumptions about how people behave that may not fully reflect reality. Such
assumptions may facilitate modeling these systems and are often necessary to make
models tractable to understand how individual decision-making influences systemlevel change and vice versa. However, simplifying how people respond to changes
in their social and natural environments can also lead to inaccurate conclusions
about how such changes can impact human and natural systems.
Economic models of individual decision-making are a common approach to representing human behavior in integrated human-natural models of FEW systems.
Standard economic models assume that people are rational, using optimization rules
such as profit or utility maximization
1
to guide their behavior. Using simplified
models such as these in FEW system research has advantages for researchers: under
these frameworks, decision-making processes are fairly straightforward to model
with clean decision rules (i.e., make the decision that will maximize the individual’s
profit or utility). Models that can be easily quantified are more easily integrated into
models of the natural systems.
These models can incorporate some amount of individual or landscape heterogeneity—for example, differences in income can lead to differences in the demands
for food, energy or other goods and services embedded in FEW systems. Economic
models can indirectly account for interactions among individuals through changes
in prices that result from changes in demand and can account for non-market interactions as well, e.g., pollution caused by individual activities that in turn induces
individual adaptations to the pollution. However, because the models rely on
quantifying equilibrium conditions to characterize such system feedbacks, they are
1 Utility maximization is a theoretical framework often used to model human behavior in economics. Utility maximization assumes people have a well-defined function that determines their utility
(called a utility function). In economics, this function has certain properties that make it easy to
model. For example, utility functions are assumed to be decreasing in the price of an object, so that
an individual experiences less utility if the price of that object increases. These functions and their
defined properties make them easy to incorporate into economic models, although some of the
assumptions they make may not be accurate in describing someone’s well-being, and the behavioral predictions made by using such models have often found to be lacking in their ability to
model people’s actual behavior.
4 Human Behavior and Adaptation
change their crop production and land allocation on their farms. These individual
decisions by farmers may impact water demand due to changing crop production
patterns and have downstream effects on water quality from farmers’ input use.
Farmers’ production decisions may also affect international commodity markets
through price responses to changes in production levels.
Thus, a decision at the national level may affect individual decisions, with consequences for environmental quality and resource availability at multiple scales.
Neglecting any of these behavioral responses will lead to an incomplete understanding of the potential effects of a policy such as the RFS on local, national, and international systems.
As the above example illustrates, ignoring human behavior can lead to inaccurate
models of FEW systems. Simplifying human behavior can lead to similar results.
Much of the work that incorporates human behavior and decision-making includes
assumptions about how people behave that may not fully reflect reality. Such
assumptions may facilitate modeling these systems and are often necessary to make
models tractable to understand how individual decision-making influences systemlevel change and vice versa. However, simplifying how people respond to changes
in their social and natural environments can also lead to inaccurate conclusions
about how such changes can impact human and natural systems.
Economic models of individual decision-making are a common approach to representing human behavior in integrated human-natural models of FEW systems.
Standard economic models assume that people are rational, using optimization rules
such as profit or utility maximization
1
to guide their behavior. Using simplified
models such as these in FEW system research has advantages for researchers: under
these frameworks, decision-making processes are fairly straightforward to model
with clean decision rules (i.e., make the decision that will maximize the individual’s
profit or utility). Models that can be easily quantified are more easily integrated into
models of the natural systems.
These models can incorporate some amount of individual or landscape heterogeneity—for example, differences in income can lead to differences in the demands
for food, energy or other goods and services embedded in FEW systems. Economic
models can indirectly account for interactions among individuals through changes
in prices that result from changes in demand and can account for non-market interactions as well, e.g., pollution caused by individual activities that in turn induces
individual adaptations to the pollution. However, because the models rely on
quantifying equilibrium conditions to characterize such system feedbacks, they are
1 Utility maximization is a theoretical framework often used to model human behavior in economics. Utility maximization assumes people have a well-defined function that determines their utility
(called a utility function). In economics, this function has certain properties that make it easy to
model. For example, utility functions are assumed to be decreasing in the price of an object, so that
an individual experiences less utility if the price of that object increases. These functions and their
defined properties make them easy to incorporate into economic models, although some of the
assumptions they make may not be accurate in describing someone’s well-being, and the behavioral predictions made by using such models have often found to be lacking in their ability to
model people’s actual behavior.
4 Human Behavior and Adaptation