Biography |
Current Research |
Selected Publications |
Teaching/Taught
Biography
Rachael Shwom is an assistant professor in the Human Ecology department who specializes in climate and society. She earned her Ph.D. in Sociology with a specialization in Environmental Science and Policy at Michigan State University in 2008. Her dissertation research focused on how different governmental, business, and environmental organizations sought to influence U.S. policies on appliance energy efficiency over the past three decades. She is interested in energy efficiency policy because efficiency improvements are often identified as an important and politically feasible step for reducing the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions that drive climate change. She has also researched formation of public opinions on climate change, social science’s role in enabling decision-makers to act on climate change under uncertainty, and media’s coverage of climate change.
Biography |
Current Research |
Selected Publications |
Teaching/Taught
Current Research
My research focuses on how production and consumption systems have and can change to mitigate and adapt to the risks and realities of environmental change, particularly climate change. I understand these transformations not just as technological or economic processes, but inherently social and political processes. I have examined how the general public, energy and environmental non-governmental organizations, and businesses make sense of the social and material conditions they face and their responses to it. Through my research, I seek to understand how society can reorganize for a more sustainable and resilient environmental future.
Currently, l am continuing my study of environmental and energy advocacy organizations and the factors that influence their tactical decisions and the study of public opinion on climate change. In addition, I have three new projects on how production and consumption systems can change to mitigate climate change. The first project continues my work on the energy efficiency field by analyzing the social construction of energy efficiency as an adequate and inadequate means to addressing energy and environmental problems across four decades. This research is based on a database of all New York Times Articles from 1970 to 2010 that discuss energy efficiency. The second project uses an on-line survey of the U.S. and Canadian public to document various consumption and “green lifestyle” patterns and their determinants. The third new project focuses on articulating how social change theory can inform our understanding of energy transitions.
Dynamics of Public Support for Climate Change Policies
This research investigates how the public forms its opinions on climate change policies. Through a mail and web-based survey (NSF Grant #0340621), my colleagues (Tom Dietz, Amy Dan, and David Bidwell) and I investigated how information on climate change impacts, feedback on other’s responses, and opportunities for debate on-line changed respondents climate change policy support. This research also examined the justifications individuals provided for their climate change policy support and its relationships to social psychological and demographic factors. Building on this research, I am a lead author of the American Sociological Association's chapter on "Public Opinion and Attitudes on Climate Change."
Environmental Non-Profit Organizations’ Tactics for Improving Energy Efficiency
U.S. Homeowners are now commonly told to buy a compact fluorescent light and energy efficient appliance to combat climate change, but the political fight to bring these products to the market has been a 30 year struggle. This research project (NSF Grant # 0724905) focuses on documenting the variety of cooperative and coercive tactics energy and environmental non-profits have used to bring about changes in manufacturer decisions to produce energy efficient appliances. To answer this, I use longitudinal network analysis of organizational interactions and partnerships to identify diffusion of changes in tactics coupled with 6 in-depth organizational case studies to understand the dynamic factors influencing tactical decisions.
Consumption, Energy, and Climate Change
While my work on public opinion has focused on stated public policy support or beliefs about climate change, my newest research project underway this summer studies household consumption patterns. In my review of the literature, consumption is a key driver of climate change and that many individuals are interested in what they can do in their daily lives. Consumers have been theorized in vastly different ways in the social scientific literature: as economic maximizers, as “predictably irrational” in the behavioral economics literature, as “locked in” to their current system of consumption, and as “socially organized” to consume like others (as described in my and graduate student Janet Lorenzen’s paper in WILEY: Climate Change). The empirical project building on this review, undertaken with my colleagues Jonn Axen and Danette Moule at Simon Fraser University, uses an on-line survey of the U.S. and Canadian public to identify clusters of green practices and their determinants. This survey will be fielded in the summer of 2012 and analyzed in the fall of 2012.
This work is intended to provide a basis to explore the significant influencers and determinants of consumption behaviors and develop a more complete research project understanding how consumption is tied to social institutions and opportunities for change.
