Department of Work, Organisation and Society

Psychology of consumer & environment

Members of our research group

Tenured

Visiting

Teaching assistant & PhD canditate

PhD candidate

Former PhD-students / post-doctoral researchers affiliated to the research group

Current research topics

Experimental Insights into Pro-Environmental Decision-Making (Frederik De Spiegeleer)

  • Environmental change, driven by human activities, is one of the most pressing issues facing society today. Significant alterations, such as global warming and biodiversity loss, have spurred a growing interest in studying pro-environmental behavior (PEB) over the past few decades. To better understand human behavior and mitigate adverse environmental impacts, this research project aims to investigate PEB experimentally, offering deeper insights into how individuals make pro-environmental decisions in real-life scenarios.

The psychology of pro-environmental behaviour (Berre Deltomme)

  • One of the major contributors to environmental decline is human consumption. As such, behavioural changes will be a crucial part of moving towards a more sustainable world. However, the change to more sustainable consumption comes with some big challenges. Providing consumers with the right information, bridging the intention-behaviour gap, overcoming habits, setting new norms,.. is not an easy endeavour. Behaviours that are less harming or beneficial for the environment are known as ‘pro-environmental behaviour’. A first line of research tries to understand how pro-environmental behaviour works and how it can be measured. Next to that we study how people take the environmental impact into account when making consumer choices and how we can influence choices to be more sustainable. For these studies, we mainly use (conjoint-based) experiments and questionnaires.

Survey methods and measurement modeling (Bert Weijters)

  • Survey methods research includes work on response styles, inattentive responding, questionnaire design, etc.; measurement modeling focuses on Structural Equation Modeling, including work on modeling method effects, parceling and the SEMWISE method.

Consumer interactions with digital services (Sam Van der Linden)

  • .Since the end of the twentieth century, digital technologies have changed the view of the entertainment sector. The rise of new digital services and virtual worlds has impacted how consumers interact with music, video and games and the question rises which aspects encourage consumer behavior and increase consumer attachment. Our research focuses on self-investment behaviors of consumers and the feeling of psychological ownership in digital technologies and link these concepts to among others emotional experiences and use.

Consumer psychology (Barbara Briers en Jonathan Dhondt)

  • Barbara’ s research focuses on social marketing, persuasion and social influence, food consumption, and wealth inequality.
  • Jonathan' s research focuses on (spontaneous) measures of preferences and intuitions, food consumption and food beliefs among parents and children.