Sustainability

An emerging line of research is concerned with questions in the domain of sustainability and climate change.  In one project, we found that people are more likely to engage in downward comparisons when evaluating their environmental actions, compared to other common social comparison domains (Diel & Friese, 2024). This tendency can be partly explained by the morally charged nature of environmental behavior. Recent work analyzed how it is best possible to estimate the potential of behavior change interventions to mitigate climate change (Friese, Diel, & Thiel, unpublished). Our analysis suggests that current design and reporting practices of behavior change intervention studies should be improved and also gather information about the persistence and scalability of intervention effects. 

Our lab also participated in multi-site collaborative research projects in the domain of behavioral science and climate change (Doell et al., 2024; Vlasceanu et al., 2024; Cologna et al., 2025).