Research Cluster Behavioral Economics and Societal Transformation

Welcome to the research cluster "Behavioral Economics and Societal Transformation" (“Wissenschaftsraum Verhaltensökonomik und gesellschaftliche Transformation”. The cluster is a collaboration between seven universities in Lower Saxony (Clausthal University of Technology, University of Göttingen, Leibniz University Hannover, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Osnabrück University, University of Vechta) and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology. We are funded by the Volkswagen Foundation and the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture as part of the "Wissenschaftsräume" funding line. The funding period will begin in the third quarter of 2024. On these websites, we present our activities and our team.

The research cluster "Behavioral Economics and Societal Transformation" systematically links various universities in Lower Saxony in research, teaching and transfer activities. It comprises an interdisciplinary team of professors whose research focuses on the field of behavioral economics. We investigate the effects of different transformation processes on various social groups, based on behavioral economics research. The focus is on analyzing the behavioral changes and changes in economic outcome variables caused by transformation, as well as their interactions. On the one hand, global transformation processes affect both behavior (e.g. consumer behavior in times of climate change or voting behavior due to the perception of "feeling left behind") and outcome variables (e.g. a changed party landscape due to persistently high migration or labor market effects of automation and digitization). On the other hand, there is a significant heterogeneity between social groups. Our focus is particularly on the empirical analysis of the behavior of heterogeneous actors (especially in the dimensions of urban-rural, income, gender, social/cultural diversity, risk attitudes and political attitudes).