Dr. Paul C. Stern is a preeminent scholar in environmental behavior research with over two decades of leadership in the field. He currently serves as President and Senior Scholar of the Social and Environmental Research Institute, a position he has held since founding the organization in 1996. Prior to establishing SERI, Dr. Stern worked as principal staff officer at the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, where he contributed to the Advisory Committee to the U.S. Global Change Research Program and the Board on Environmental Change and Society. He earned his B.A. from Amherst College and completed both his M.A. and Ph.D. in psychology at Clark University, establishing the interdisciplinary foundation for his influential career bridging social science and environmental policy.
Dr. Stern's groundbreaking research on environmentally significant behavior has fundamentally transformed understanding of human dimensions in global environmental change. His co-authored textbook Environmental Problems and Human Behavior has become a seminal reference in the field, while his 2016 Nature Energy paper on reducing fossil fuel consumption represents a major contribution to climate solutions research. With an extraordinary scholarly impact evidenced by over 82,000 citations and an h-index of 91 according to Google Scholar, his work has informed numerous National Academies reports that shape U.S. environmental policy. Dr. Stern's integrative approach has established critical frameworks for analyzing the psychological and social determinants of sustainable behavior across diverse contexts.
As a senior scholar with the Board on Environmental Change and Society, Dr. Stern continues to advance the science of human-environment interactions through extensive collaborations with leading researchers including Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom and Thomas Dietz. His leadership extends to policy development regarding environmental hazards and community decision-making, contributing to more equitable environmental governance practices nationwide. Dr. Stern remains actively engaged in cutting-edge research on sustainable behavior and environmental decision-making, mentoring the next generation of scholars while providing essential insights for addressing contemporary environmental challenges. His enduring influence ensures that the human dimensions of global change remain central to comprehensive climate research and policy development worldwide.
