Behaviour in Transitions

Transitions in society are very complex. Their trajectories are uncertain and require behaviour change from all actors involved. For example, in energy transitions, policymakers must design policies that push for technological, system, and social innovations, and citizens and organisations need to accept and use these innovations. For informed policy analysis and policymaking, it is necessary to formalise and model this multi-actor behaviour. However, knowledge about its underlying drivers and barriers is needed to model behaviour. This knowledge can be provided by the scientific field of psychology and other areas, including economics, sociology, and philosophy.

In this course, you will learn how behavioural insights (from various scientific disciplines) can help facilitate the formalisation and modelling of behaviour in transitions. More specifically, you will learn how behavioural perspectives, theories, and research methods can be applied to analyse the scientific understanding of multi-actor behaviour and the effectiveness of models. Application is challenging because human behaviour varies widely due to individualistic differences, biases, context and social interactions. Simply said, it is hard to translate behaviour into 'ones' and 'zeroes'. In this course, we take on this challenge.