Postdoctoral Research Assistant
Penn State
112D Armsby, University Park, PA, 16802
eatonwes@psu.edu
http://aese.psu.edu/directory/wme107
Weston M. Eaton is Assistant Research Professor in the Agricultural Economics, Sociology, and Education (AESE) Department at The Pennsylvania State University. He coordinates the Water for Agriculture Socio-Behavioral Research Team which investigates whether and how stakeholder and community engagement processes build community capacity to address non-point source pollution, water availability, and other water/agricultural issues. While engagement, which we define as participation of diverse stakeholders in collaborative decision-making processes, is promoted by resource management agencies as necessary for solving complex environmental problems, empirical evidence for how stakeholder engagement processes foster social learning or change in social phenomena including individual and group level knowledge, empathy, trust, self- and collective-efficacy, shared vision, and leadership skills is scant. Scientific knowledge on how such changes happen, and how these changes relate to improved social and environmental outcomes represents a pressing knowledge gap our team aims to address.