Adapting to Environmental Changes: the Risks of Social and Technological Innovations

Abstract

The initial methodological position mentioned in the article is the following statement: changes at any level contain a potential threat of damage — that is, a risk — and require developing a strategy for taking on these risks. The article expands on why scientific research is relevant, and speaks of how important it is for management practices to accumulate and generalize sociological knowledge about the social and personal determinants affecting how the population chooses its adaptation strategies in response to such changes in the institutional environment that violate their traditional way of life. The study object is the population, the subject — the main determinants that define how one adapts to the risks of environmental innovations. Adaptation in the context of this article is interpreted by the author as the process of choosing and implementing a decision pertaining to the types of actions that ensure the subject’s minimal vulnerability when dealing with the risks of a changing living environment. In order to identify the factors that influence choice of strategy for adapting to such environmental changes that may cause damage to a human being’s health and lifestyle, the projective situation method was used. Data from the 27th wave of RLMS–HSE was used as the empirical data base. The author correlates the interpretation of empirical data with the resource approach, specifically with the idea of “total life resource” (N.F. Naumova). The goal is to identify the relationship between choosing a particular strategy for adapting to the risks of environmental innovations and individual elements and indicators of total life resource. Our analysis allowed for us to propose an expanded typology of strategies for forced adaptation to the risks of environmental changes, as well as to identify a number of factors that determine the choice. Overall it can be argued that such a type of resource as one’s natural abilities seems to contribute to differentiation in the most significant way. If we look into individual factors, the following contribute to strategy differentiation: age, presence of and desire to achieve life goals, ability to adapt, emotional and psychological status, preferred method for solving problems, health, life satisfaction, gender, level of education, social status.