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The personal assessments of the current and expected future state of the environment by 3232 community respondents in 18 nations were investigated at the local, national, and global spatial levels. These assessments were compared to a ranking of each country’s environmental quality by an expert panel. Temporal pessimism (“things will get worse”) was found in the assessments at all three spatial levels. Spatial optimism bias (“things are better here than there”) was found in the assessments of current environmental conditions in 15 of 18 countries, but not in the assessments of the future. All countries except one exhibited temporal pessimism, but significant differences between them were common. Evaluations of current environmental conditions also differed by country. Citizens’ assessments of current conditions, and the degree of comparative optimism, were strongly correlated with the expert panel’s assessments of national environmental quality. Aside from the value of understanding global trends in environmental assessments, the results have important implications for environmental policy and risk management strategies

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Many regions around the world experience both chronic and intermittent needs for residents to reduce their water consumption. Recent advances in water metering infrastructure offer opportunities to provide customers with detailed feedback about their consumption, but research in behavioral science suggests that feedback by itself is not enough to motivate conservation. The current empirical work builds on previous studies showing the ability of an augmented feedback approach to promote reductions in residential water consumption, and extends previous research by exploring the variability in responses to this feedback. A sample of Sacramento customers was provided with printed home water reports in which they could see their household water consumption compared with similar homes in their area. The results showed that households that received the report used 8.35% less water in the subsequent 6 months than did similar households that did not receive the printed reports. Additional analyses showed that the effect was particularly strong for high-consuming households, and that the discrepancy between household consumption and similar homes influenced the amount of water savings.