Thomas Dietz

Biosketch

Thomas Dietz, PhD is University Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Michigan State University. He earned his B.G.S. from Kent State University and his PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. Dietz served as president of the Society for Human Ecology and cofounded two non-profits, the Kent Legal Defense Fund and the Social and Environmental Research Institute. He is a Danforth Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and served as Advisor on Population Affairs to the U.S. Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare. His has won the Sustainability Science Award of the Ecological Society of America, the Gerald R. Young Outstanding Book Award, and several distinguished publication and contribution awards from the American Sociological Association.

Research Interests

Dr. Dietz’s research examines environmental decision making, how social structure and institutions influence sustainability and the relationship between public deliberation with scientific analysis in decision making. His work helps integrate theories through the values-beliefs-norms approach that emphasizes the importance of both altruism and self-interest in shaping action. His STIRPAT framework has become a standard approach in macro-comparative analysis of the drivers of anthropogenic environmental stress and human well-being, sparking empirical research on hypothesized drivers such as population, affluence and inequality. His work on deliberative decision making has influenced numerous National Research Council and other policy focused reports.