The impact in decision-making on health and environmental risks

Background

There is a growing consensus that quantifying the impact of climate change on human health needs to be prioritised. By 2050, populations’ exposure to climate hazards are predicted to intensify and climate hazards for the 40 percent of humanity living in coastal zones will increase (IPCC 2022). There is a need to understand how vulnerable populations are successful and resilient to adapt their behaviours to climate hazards. For this purpose, we aim to extend the research that studies the links between water risks, individual aversion to risks and uncertainty (including ambiguity and aversion to losses) and cooperation for adaptation. We will use various methods, including economic experiments, valuation of health risks, remote sensing and water risk modelling. Making this project interdisciplinary is essential, as climate change brings changes at various levels, including individual behaviour, water and land use, food and agriculture and adaptation to risk, uncertainty and ambiguity.

PhD opportunity

Our research project is two-fold. First, we want to understand how and under which conditions people cooperate to reduce risk and uncertainty from climate change in areas at risk of environmental hazards. Increased cooperation to reduce risk of climate change tackles issues directly related to adaptation and livelihoods, especially in coastal and farming areas. We expect to merge data collection involving advances in experimental and behavioural economics (such as various measures of risk and ambiguity aversion, public goods games and irrigation games) with water risk modelling, use of the land and hydrology within an interdisciplinary lens.  Second, we aim to study how health and environment risks are traded-off in populations exposed to floods and cyclones, and where the use of the land has changed over time due to climate change exposure. For this you will develop your own risk-risk trade-off, non-monetary valuation scenario for health and environmental risks, and there will be primary data collection involved. The data collected will be geo-located, and will be merged with remote sensing data to understand how risk tolerance to environmental hazards is related to exposure. The target area of the World will be decided among the PhD candidate and the supervisors, but these research questions are highly salient and relevant in Low- and Middle-Income countries, where we aim to make advances in terms which institutions increase cooperation and where policymakers benefit from information coming from a bottom to top approach to solving climate-related issues. We expect the PhD student to have an active role in showcasing research under Water@Leeds and the Priestley Centre for Climate Change, as well as being an active researcher in other various internal and external research activities at the University of Leeds.

Other information

Students with a strong background in behavioural and experimental economics who are interested in environmental and health topics, who want to apply their skills to running lab, lab-in-the-field experiments, RCTs and economic valuation experiments. We aim to recruit a student who is also interested in learning to work with other types of data that support our primary data collection, such as remote sensing and hydrological data.

• Centre for Decision Research: https://cdr.leeds.ac.uk/