Current Projects
We are currently working on several research projects with the goal of creating a better understanding of individual and collective judgment and decision making in the energy and climate domain and the effectiveness of interventions, as well as integrating psychological decision data into energy and climate models.
The evidence base for the damaging effects of anthropogenic climate change is clear. Behavior change towards less carbon intensive lifestyles, however, has been largely insufficient. Reasons for limited actions are manifold, spanning from polarization and politicization of the topic – fueled by systematic climate misinformation – to established habits, misperceptions, and contextual barriers.
We aim to better aim to better understand the psychological mechanisms of sustainable behavior in various environments and societal groups by using a broad methodological spectrum. This includes experimental decision paradigms with real-world consequences, process tracing methods, social media tracking, and system modelling. In light of the global and dynamic nature of climate change, we gather data from diverse countries and across significant societal events such as public elections and societal crises. For instance, in a preregistered report, we provide evidence for the detrimental effects of climate change misinformation on public climate change beliefs and actions in 12 Western and non-Western countries. Extending this research line, we currently examine the factors that drive the active acquisition and integration of climate misinformation on three continents.
In longitudinal research, we examined how policy support, energy literacy, and energy efficiency preferences changed across the 2022/2023 energy crisis winter in Europe. The study shows that public support for climate policies remains stable even in times of low public attention to the topic. In contrast, energy efficiency product preferences declined as public attention toward the energy crisis decreased. Coupling experimental data with real world energy price data showed that this effect was attenuated for those exposed to large real-world energy price increases.
By linking robust psychological research with real-world contexts and events, our research can directly inform targeted and context-specific
policies.
Classic policy instruments such as taxes, subsides, and bans are often not sufficient to motivate systematic behavior change or lack the needed support in the public. We develop and validate theory-based behavioral interventions to promote more sustainable develop and validate theory-based behavioral interventions to promote more sustainable behavior and test how their effectiveness varies across contexts... We further aim to unravel the cognitive and affective mechanisms driving behavior change.
To this end, we couple experimental paradigms with process tracing tools to examine how behavior change is driven by changes in information search during the decision making process. For example, in recent studies we showed that tailored information on compatibility of electric vehicles (EV) with one’s individual mobility demand can increase adoption (here) and sustainable usage decisions (here). The results showed that tailored information altered the prioritization of EV range information in the decision making process, especially for participants with low mobility demand. That is, the intervention specifically targeted behavior of those that would benefit most from behavior change and did not “nudge” individuals with high mobility demand into suboptimal behavior. This research offers important contributions to our understanding of heterogeneity in intervention effects and ethical considerations in the application of behavioral intervention.
In current research, we examine how behavioral interventions can be optimally combined with classic instruments (e.g., taxes) and when such combinations lead to “crowding out” effects of one intervention component. Taken together, this research can reveal when, where, and how behavioral interventions work.
Behavior does not occur in isolation but is impacted by our social and physical environments. Research from psychology however often neglects such influences and dynamics in the study of human behavior. Moreover, policy making is primarily interested in accumulated effects of behavior on the level of larger societal systems rather than individual behavior, a circumstance which may explain the limited consideration of psychological research in (climate) policy design. Techno economic research fills this gap by using dynamic system modelling, but these models largely consider humans to be mere rational agents and thus neglect the basic principles of human decision making.
We address this issue by developing modelling frameworks based on state-of-the-art psychological research, adress this issue by developing modelling frameworks based state--of--the--art psychollogical research, paying particular attention to the integration of experimental human decision data into system modelling. In a recent study, we developed an agentbased model, grounded in experimental data, on the co-adoption of low-carbon energy technologies. This study highlighted that, even with decreasing investment costs, accelerating the diffusion of these technologies largely depends on the “right” (i.e., specific) policy mix.
In the Horizon Europe project DIAMOND, we work together with world-leading modelling teams to integrate experimental data into Integrated Assessment Models. The models serve as the scientific tool used to inform policy makers about climate, economic, and societal trajectories and play a key role in the assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The project bears the potential to improve the representation.