Invited editors

Fátima Bernardo
Departament of Psychology, University of Évora / Center for Urban and Regional Systems, Technical University of Lisbon
Portugal

Rui Gaspar
Departament of Psychology, University of Évora / Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (CIS, ISCTE-IUL), Centro de Investigação e Intervenção Social (CIS)
Portugal

Vivianne Visschers
ETH Zurich, Institute for Environmental Decisions, Consumer Behavior
Switzerland

Call open from: August 2013
Extended abstract deadline: 31st October 2013

Background

This special issue - A changing world: coping with environmental, social and economic risks - aims to go beyond the environmental psychology scope of the journal and target its broader scope focused on ecological psychology and the person-environment interaction. For this reason, it also embarks social and economic aspects, apart from environmental issues, as it is often difficult to separate these in the “real world” of risk coping. In fact, people often cope with multiple threats and thus a multidisciplinary approach in this regard is needed, focusing on the associated cognitive and affective processes.

Scope

How do people cope with the risks to the self and relevant others, which they face in today’s world? How do people respond and which affective and cognitive resources do they draw upon, to face individual and situational demands and threats?

Understanding the coping strategies and resources used to implement these, is an important task for social scientists, not only to mitigate current risks but also to prevent future and emergent risks. By doing this, scientists can achieve the goal of enhancing people’s adaptive processes.

With this goal in mind, this special issue will focus on strategies and resources used by individuals to cope with environmental, social and economic risks. This takes into consideration the cognitive, behavioural and affective dimensions of coping, including but not restricted to:

• Coping with risk uncertainty
• Social and place identity as moderators of risk perception and threat coping
• The role of affective processes (e.g., affective appraisals, associations and emotions) and of cognitive processes (e.g., heuristics) in coping with threats.
• Expected coping with future risks (e.g. temporal discounting and affective forecasting) and the influence of prior coping on future reappraisals of the same or similar threats
• New research methods to assess threat coping
• Interventions designed to enhance adaptation to social, economic and environmental threats and demands
• Coping with threats posed by natural and non-natural disasters
• Coping with threats posed by hazardous technologies

Languages

English and Spanish

Proposals submission

Taking into consideration the above themes and the focus on environmental, social and economic risks, we cordially invite manuscript submissions that describe empirical studies and consider one or more of the above themes. Theoretical approaches will also be accepted if they present an innovative perspective on the issues and an integrated viewpoint across psychological disciplines and social science approaches. Please note that submitted papers should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere.

The articles submitted can be written in English or Spanish, following the journal’s author guidelines. However, initially, a 1000 word extended abstract in English must be submitted; deadline for the reception of abstracts is October 31st, 2013.

Please send your extended abstract in MS Word format as an attachment to the following e-mail address: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it A confirmation email will be sent upon reception. The submission email should include in the subject line, the title of this special issue. In addition, your abstract should include the following information: title, author names and affiliations, main text (1000 words), and references.

Authors will be notified if the extended abstract has been approved by November 21st, 2013. Upon approval by the invited Editorial Staff, authors will be asked to submit full papers (not exceeding 20 pages in length or 5000 words, including notes, references, and all other elements), before February 28th, 2014. All submissions will be peer- reviewed by outside experts.