Bio

Robin began his career as an economist (Yale, 1972), interested in choices made by individuals in relation to tradeoffs between economic development and environmental protection. After moving to the west coast of Canada and completing a Master's degree in Natural Resource Economics (University of British Columbia, 1974), he worked as a teacher and consultant for several years, focusing on questions relating to the pros and cons of the many hydroelectric developments that at that time were reshaping the societies and economics of the Pacific Northwest.

This work increased Robin's interest in how choices are made and, in particular, the interface of psychology and economics. He then went back to graduate school for an interdisciplinary PhD in economics and psychology (UBC, 1982), working closely with Daniel Kahneman and Jack Knetsch on questions that became central to the developing fields of behavioral economics and behavioral decision research. After two years of teaching at Keene State College in New Hampshire (while his wife completed a master's degree in movement therapy), he returned to the west coast to work with Paul Slovic, Sarah Lichtenstein, and Baruch Fischhoff at Decision Research in Eugene, Oregon. Except for short stints at the National Science Foundation (1988-89) and the United Nations in Geneva (1994-95), Robin's research and applied consulting emphasis for the past thirty years has focused on topics related to facilitating meaningful stakeholder participation as part of environmental policy deliberations, encouraging learning and adaptive resource management, using decision-aiding techniques to evaluate nonmarket benefits and costs, and understanding processes of preference construction and elicitation.

Much of Robin's research funding has come through grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation, principally the Decision, Risk and Management Science (DRMS) program and the Ethics and Values (EVS) program, both within the Division of Biological and Behavioral Sciences. This includes awards, beginning in 1987 and continuing through to the present, to study risk perceptions (with Sarah Lichtenstein and Paul Slovic; 1987-90), risk tradeoffs and data analysis methods (with Paul Slovic and Robert Mendelsohn; 1989-91), techniques for constructing preferences as part of surveys (with Paul Slovic and Jim Flynn; 1991-93) eliciting objectives and developing performance criteria (with Ralph Keeney; 1993-95), conducting group-based experimental comparisons of deliberative processes (with Tim McDaniels and Joseph Arvai; 1996-99); understanding contributors to time preferences (with Jack Knetsch and Ellen Peters;1999-2002), addressing taboo tradeoffs (with Julie Irwin and Sarah Lichtenstein; 2001-04), and encouraging learning through adaptive management (with Joseph Arvai and Daniel Ohlson; 2004 – 2005). Other research awards have come from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (Canada), the Electric Power Research Institute, the USDA Forest Service, Carnegie Mellon University, the United Nations, the International Joint Commission, and a variety of provincial and state agencies in British Columbia, Ontario, Oregon, and Washington.

Current positions include Senior Researcher at the Decision Research office in British Columbia, Canada (head office: Eugene, Oregon), Associate Director of the Eco-Risk Research Unit at the University of British Columbia, and Director of Value Scope Research, a small consulting firm. Robin continues to lead research projects and workshops for government, private, and international groups on questions relating to risk management, the conduct of deliberative groups, and techniques for eliciting preferences and addressing difficult tradeoffs. He is a Fellow of the Society for Risk Analysis, a member of the Editorial Board of the journal Decision Analysis (and, previously, on the Editorial Council of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management), a former panelist with the National Science Foundation, and a frequent presenter at a variety of professional meetings and government-sponsored conferences.

Refereed Publications

Keeney, R., & Gregory, R. (in press). Selecting attributes to measure the achievement of objectives. Operations Research.

McDaniels, T., & Gregory, R. (in press). Learning as an objective within a structured risk management decision process. Environmental Science and Technology.

Pidgeon, N., & Gregory, R. (2004). Judgment , decision making, and public policy. In D. Koehler & N. Harvey (Eds.), Handbook of judgment and decision making (pp. 604-623). Oxford, UK: Blackwell.

Gregory, R. (2004). Valuing risk management choices. In T. McDaniels & M. Small (Eds.), Risk analysis and society: An interdisciplinary characterization of the field. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Trousdale, W., & Gregory, R. (2004). Property evaluation and biodiversity conservation: Decision support for making hard choices. Ecological Economics, 48, 279-291.

Arvai, J., & Gregory, R. (2003). Testing alternative decision approaches for
identifying cleanup priorities at contaminated sites. Environmental Science & Technology, 37, 1469-1476.

Failing. L., & Gregory, R. (2003). Ten common mistakes in designing biodiversity indicators for forest policy. Journal of Environmental Management, 68, 121-132.

Gregory, R., Fischhoff, B., Thorne, S., & Butte, G. (2003). A multi-channel stakeholder consultation process for transmission deregulation. Energy Policy, 31, 1291-1299.

McDaniels, T., Gregory, R., Arvai, J., & Chuenpagdee, R. (2003). Decision structuring to alleviate embedding in environmental valuation. Ecological Economics, 46, 33-36.

Peters, E., Slovic, P., & Gregory, R. (2003). The role of affect in the WTA/WTP disparity. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 16, 303-330.

Gregory, R., & Keeney, R. (2002). Making smarter environmental management decisions. Journal of the American Water Resources Association, 38, 1601-1612.

Gregory, R. (2002). Incorporating value tradeoffs into community-based environmental risk decisions. Environmental Values, 11, 461-488.

Arvai, J., McDaniels, T., & Gregory, R. (2002). Exploring a structured decision approach as a means of fostering participatory space policy making at NASA. Space Policy, 18, 221-231.

Gregory, R., & Satterfield, T. (2002). Beyond perception: The experience of risk and stigma in community contexts. Risk Analysis, 22, 347-358.

Gregory, R., & Failing, L. (2002). Using decision analysis to encourage sound deliberation: Water use planning in British Columbia, Canada. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 21, 492-499.

Gregory, R., Arvai, J., & McDaniels, T. (2001). Value-focused thinking for environmental risk consultations. Research in Social Problems and Public Policy, 9, 249-274.

Arvai, J., Gregory, R., & McDaniels, T. (2001). Testing a structured decision approach: Value-focused thinking for deliberative risk communication. Risk Analysis, 21, 1065-1076.

Gregory, R., McDaniels, T., & Fields, D. (2001). Decision aiding, not dispute resolution: Creating insights through structured environmental decisions. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 20, 415-432.

Gregory, R., & Wellman, K. (2001). Bringing stakeholder values into environmental policy choices: A community-based estuary case study. Ecological Economics, 39, 37-52.

Russell, C., Dale, V., Lee, J., Jensen, M., Kane, M., & Gregory, R. (2001). Experimenting with multi-attribute utility survey methods in a multidimensional valuation problem. Ecological Economics, 36, 87-108.

Gregory, R. (2000). Using stakeholder values to make smarter environmental management decisions. Environment, 42, 34-44.

Gregory, R. (2000). Valuing environmental policy options: A case-study comparison of multiattribute and contingent valuation survey methods. Land Economics, 76, 151-173.

Clemen, R., & Gregory, R. (2000). Preparing adult students to be better decision makers. In I. Gal (Ed.), Adult numeracy development: Theory, research, practice (pp. 73-86). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Satterfield, T., Slovic, P., & Gregory, R. (2000). Narrative valuation in a policy judgment context. Ecological Economics, 34, 315-331.

Gregory, R. (1999). Identifying environmental values. In In V. H. Dale & M. R. English (Eds.), Tools to aid environmental decision making (pp. 32-58). New York: Springer-Verlag.

Gregory, R. (1999). Commentary on "Measuring constructed preferences: Toward a building code" by Payne, Bettman and Schkade. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 19, 273-275.

Brown, T., & Gregory, R. (1999). Why the WTA-WTP Disparity Matters. Ecological Economics, 28, 323-335.

McDaniels, T., Gregory, R., & Fields, D. (1999). Democratizing risk management: Successful public involvement in local water management decisions. Risk Analysis, 19, 497-510.

Slovic, P., & Gregory, R. (1999). Risk analysis, decision analysis, and the social context for risk decision making. In J. Shanteau, B. Mellers, & D. Schum (Eds.), Decision science and technology: Reflections on the contributions of Ward Edwards (pp. 353-365). Boston: Kluwer Academic.

Satterfield, T., & Gregory, R. (1998). Reconciling environmental values and pragmatic choices. Society & Natural Resources, 11, 629-647.

Wagner, R., Flynn, J., Gregory, R., Mertz, C. K. & Slovic, P. (1998). Acceptable practices in Ontario's forests: Differences between the public and forestry professionals. New Forests, 16, 139-154.

Wagner, R., Flynn, J., & Gregory, R. (1998). Public perceptions of risk and acceptability of forest vegetation management alternatives in Ontario. The Forestry Chronicle, 74, 720-727.

Gregory, R., & Slovic, P. (1997). A constructive approach to environmental valuation. Ecological Economics, 21, 175-181.

Gregory, R., Flynn, J., Johnson, S., Satterfield, T., Slovic, P., & Wagner, R. (1997). Decision pathway surveys: A tool for resource managers. Land Economics, 73, 240-254.

Wellman, K., Nugent, R., & Gregory, R. (1997). Assessing stakeholder values for salmon restoration in Willapa Bay, Washington. Interact: The Journal of Public Participation, 3, 38-56.

Gregory, R., Slovic, P., & Flynn, J. (1996). Risk perceptions, stigma, and health policy. Health & Place, 2, 213-220.

Gregory, R., & von Winterfeldt, D. (1996). The effects of electromagnetic fields from transmission lines on public fears and property values. Journal of Environmental Management, 48, 201-214.

Gregory, R., Brown, T., & Knetsch, J. (1996). Valuing risks to the environment. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 545, 54-63.

Gregory, R., Lichtenstein, S., Brown, T., Peterson, G., & Slovic, P. (1995). How precise are monetary representations of environmental improvements? Land Economics, 71, 462-473.

Gregory, R., Flynn, J., & Slovic, P. (1995). Technological stigma. American Scientist, 83, 220-223.

Gregory, R., & Keeney, R. L. (1994). Creating policy alternatives using stakeholder values. Management Science, 40, 1035-1048.

Gregory, R., & Lichtenstein, S. (1994). A hint of risk: Tradeoffs between quantitative and qualitative risk factors. Risk Analysis, 14(2), 199-206.

Loomis, J., Gonzalez-Caban, A., & Gregory, R. (1994). Do reminders of substitutes and budget constraints influence contingent valuation estimates? Land Economics, 70, 499-506.

Slovic, P., Flynn, J., & Gregory, R. (1994). Stigma happens: Social problems in the siting of nuclear waste facilities. Risk Analysis, 14(5), 773-777.

Gregory, R., Lichtenstein, S., & MacGregor, D. (1993). The role of past states in determining reference points for policy decisions. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 55, 195-206.

Gregory, R., Lichtenstein, S., & Slovic, P. ( 1993). Valuing environmental resources: A constructive approach. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 7, 177-197.

Gregory, R., & Mendelsohn, R. (1993). Perceived risk, dread, and benefits. Risk Analysis, 13, 259-264.

Gregory, R., MacGregor, D., & Lichtenstein, S. (1992). Assessing the quality of expressed preference measures of value. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 17, 277-292.

Gregory, R., Keeney, R., & von Winterfeldt, D. (1992). Adapting the environmental impact statement process to inform decision makers. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 11, 58-75.

Gregory, R. (1991). Critical thinking for environmental health risk education. Health Education Quarterly, 18, 273-284.

Gregory, R., Kunreuther, H., Easterling, D., & Richards, K. (1991). Incentives policies to site hazardous waste facilities. Risk Analysis, 11, 667-675.

McDaniels, T., & Gregory, R. (1991). A framework for structuring cross-cultural research on risk and decision making. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 22, 103-128.

Gregory, R., & Kunreuther, H. (1990). Successful siting incentives. Journal of Civil Engineering, 60, 73-75.

Gregory, R., Mendelsohn, R., & Moore, T. (1989). Measuring the benefits of endangered species preservation: From research to policy. Journal of Environmental Management, 29, 399-407.

Gregory, R., Niemi, E., & Mendelsohn, R. (1989). A model for evaluating the impacts of forest management regulations. Journal of Environmental Management, 29, 129-144.

Furby, L., Gregory, R., Slovic, P., & Fischhoff, B. (1988). Electric power transmission lines, property values, and compensation. Journal of Environmental Management, 27, 69-83.

Furby, L., Slovic, P., Fischhoff, B., & Gregory, R. (1988). Public perceptions of electric power transmission lines. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 8, 19-43.

Fischhoff, B., Furby, L., & Gregory, R. (1987). Evaluating voluntary risks of injury. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 19, 51-62.

Books

Peterson, G. L., Driver, B. L., & Gregory R. (Eds.). (1988). Amenity resource valuation: Integrating economics with other disciplines. State College, PA: Venture.

Gregory, R. Constructing environmental decisions. Manuscript in preparation.