Rumi Naito

Email: rumisen@gmail.com

Research interests:

Human behavior and behavior change in conservation and land use in tropical landscapes, collaborative decision-making, avoided deforestation, biodiversity conservation, tropical fire ecology, and ecosystem services.

 

Biography:

Rumi is a Ph.D. student in the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability (IRES) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), focusing on behavioral psychology applied to conservation and natural resource management in tropical landscapes. She is also a Liu Scholar at the Liu Institute for Global Issues and a UBC’s Four Year Doctoral Fellowship recipient. Drawing on her previous research experience over nine years in Indonesia, she is interested in understanding the complexity of human behaviors in conservation and land use, and investigating effective incentives and messaging strategies to address land-use challenges such as deforestation and peatland fires through behavior change. Her doctoral studies will rely on insights from cognitive principles and experiments in order to design behavioral interventions which aim to increase forest-dependent people’s awareness and attention on land-use challenges, and ultimately influence their decisions and actions for sustainability.

 

Prior to starting her doctoral studies at UBC, Rumi worked with an Indonesia-based consulting firm, Starling Resources, as a senior project manager on a number of projects, including land-use and forestry policies, reducing deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) mechanisms, ecosystem restoration, peatland fire prevention, agroecology and community development throughout Indonesia and the Asia Pacific. She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in New York, with a focus on Environmental Policy Studies for Southeast Asia.

 

Supervisors:

Dr. Kai Chan from IRES

Dr. Jiaying Zhao cross-appointed at the Department of Psychology and IRES