About

Stephen Mainzer is a social scientist and designer dedicated to recentering the concept of place within U.S. democracy by exploring how coupled environmental and political sentiments influence and are influenced by people's sense of place. His research emphasizes how the environments where individuals live affect their identity, thoughts, and actions toward environmental issues. Much of his work supports Penn State’s land grant mission, with a focus on Pennsylvania and the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Mainzer teaches introductory studio design courses that prioritize process, culture, and communication, encouraging students to learn through doing, practice co-regulation of studio norms, and develop self-regulation of independent inquiry. His academic background includes a dual-title Ph.D. in Architecture and Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment, complemented by six years of professional practice and collaboration with colleagues in related fields. His scholarly contributions include research on socio-ecological systems, collective identity in environmental governance, and the political-environmental dynamics affecting water quality and sustainability in regional watersheds.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Fishery
• Biology
• Computer Science
• Geography
• Law
• Archaeology
• Environmental resource management
• Ecology
• Environmental science

Selected publications

• Developing Measures of Watershed Knowledge

  Environmental Management · 2026-04-09

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Chesapeake Bay Watershed has faced long-standing challenges to water quality, a condition that impacts its residents access to clean air, water, and economic status. We suggest that collective action is necessary by watershed residents to address this problem. But, before collective action may be encouraged, we must first reliably measure the four stages of collective identity. Here, we briefly review the theoretical foundations for constructing tools that measure the first two stages: knowledge of the group and knowledge of group membership, or in the case of a watershed, general and local knowledge. Results from a survey of Pennsylvania residents show that measuring such knowledge is possible and that there are key differences between general and local knowledge. We discuss practical applications for watershed managers and describe options for shortening the indices.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Conclusion: Mediated Communities

  2025-08-07

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Toward Just Climate Futures: Examining Community Dimensions of How Researchers and Practitioners Collaborate With Indigenous Groups

  2025-08-07

  book-chapterSenior author

  Abstract No known studies have examined how justice-based frameworks for collaborating with Indigenous people in climate change adaptation are being used in practice. This chapter presents a brief overview of existing justice-based frameworks and investigates how outside institutions are navigating climate change adaptation collaboration with tribal communities in North America through an inductive analysis of interviews with researchers and organizers. We present a summary of themes demonstrating concepts used and barriers faced in engaging with tribal communities by NGOs, government agencies, and academic institutions.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: Resiliency, Efficacy, and Community in a Digital Age

  2025-08-07 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• A natural and civic conflict: the threat to place, democracy, & progress toward sustainable development goals in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, U.S.A.

  Socio-Ecological Practice Research · 2025-03-06 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Interviews with researchers and practitioners who collaborate with Indigenous groups in the United States: Are climate change adaptation frameworks helpful?

  Socio-Ecological Practice Research · 2024-06-25 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Blue and red tides in the Chesapeake Bay watershed: Examining political and environmental framings of collective action during the 2016 and 2020 elections

  PLoS ONE · 2024 · 2 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Environmental resource management

  Watersheds require collective care and management at local and regional levels to maintain their ecological health. The Chesapeake Bay's last several decades of stagnantly poor ecological health presents a distinctive case study for explicating the challenges of motivating collective action across a diverse regional natural resource. Our study uses county- and individual-level descriptive analysis to examine interrelated framings of environmental quality, environmental sentiment, and political action at two critical moments in time-the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. We find that demographic, environmental, and political characteristics vary with distance to the Chesapeake Bay and that linked environmental and political characteristics appeared to become more polarized between 2016 and 2020. We found no evidence that local environmental quality influenced new political actions such as voting; however, people already likely to vote were influenced by their pro-environmental values such as priorities around climate change.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Collective Identity: Making the Case for a Stage Model Approach to Addressing Water Quality in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

  Environmental Management · 2024-08-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  The Chesapeake Bay watershed encompasses six states and the District of Columbia. Consequently, the people within it display great diversity in terms of values, allegiances, and experiences. That diversity may help to explain an apparent inability to coordinate actions aimed at redressing the dismal water quality throughout the watershed. In this paper, we bridge theory to an applied scenario to examine the importance of developing a collective identity within the watershed to bring about changes in individual behavior and policies. We present the current conditions of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, propose a stage model for the development of a collective watershed identity, outline theoretically grounded determinants of each stage, and discuss the challenges in developing a collective identity. We further suggest several guiding questions for future research.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Holistic Wellness in Elementary Schoolyard Environments: An Analysis of 2000-2021 Research Studies

  Children Youth and Environments · 2023-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract: A lack of direct experience with the natural environment puts children at higher risk for mental disorders, obesity, social disconnection, and poor critical-thinking skills. Despite the current knowledge that wellness is a multidimensional concept, traditional approaches to evaluating the performance impacts of schoolyard environments are surprisingly monodisciplinary. This study explored a sample of how wellness impacts in elementary schoolyards are currently being studied through a meta-analysis of post-2000 literature. The results suggest a recent trend of emerging diversity in approaches, yet there remains a gap in the research for multidisciplinary approaches that incorporate multivariate dimensions of wellness.

  PublisherDOI

• Media Contributions to a Chesapeake Bay Watershed Collective Identity? A Tale of Three Cities

  Environmental Management · 2022 · 4 citations

  • Political Science
  • Geography
  • Fishery
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Charles Andrew Cole

  University of Southern California

  4 shared

• James Price Dillard

  Pennsylvania State University

  3 shared

• Andrew C. High

  Pennsylvania State University

  2 shared

• Juliet Pinto

  2 shared

• Zheng Cui

  Pennsylvania State University

  2 shared

• A. E. Luloff

  Pennsylvania State University

  2 shared

• J. J. De La Cruz

  AID Atlanta

  1 shared

• Travis Flohr

  Pennsylvania State University

  1 shared

Education

• PhD, Architecture & Human Dimensions of Natural Resources and the Environment

  Pennsylvania State University

  2017

• MS, Landscape Architecture

  Pennsylvania State University

  2011

• BLA, Landscape Architecture

  Pennsylvania State University

  2005

Awards & honors

• Architecture Research Centers Consortium Dissertation Award…
• Council of Graduate Schools/ProQuest Distinguished Dissertat…
• Best Student Paper Award, Environmental Design and Research…
• University & College Distinguished Doctoral Scholar, The Pen…
• University Olmsted Scholar, Landscape Architecture Foundatio…