Invited editors: Fátima Bernardo, Rui Gaspar, Vivianne Visschers

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.