Conclusion
Throughout this book, we have sought to identify what we see as the basic building blocks for environmental law and psychology, and for applying a psychological analysis to specific environmental laws. To that end, we have identified key ways we believe that psychological research can help in understanding and predicting why, when, and how people think about and respond to environmental harm. We have also argued that a psychological approach to environmental law and policy, which takes account of this research, can help the law more effectively shape human behavior to desired ends—whatever those ends might be. This conclusion flags a set of questions, projects, and data needs that could help policy makers and attorneys to even better understand and predict the impacts of environmental law as well as develop more effective (and in some cases cheaper) environmental laws and regulations. This includes the possibility of using law to debias; the relationship between politics and the psychology of environmental law; how environmental law might be updated in light of psychological analysis; and the role of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic within environmental law and psychology.