Postdoctoral fellow within environmental psychology

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The Department of Psychology announces a postdoctoral fellow position for a period of 2 years. The working place will be at the Department of Psychology, and you will report to the Head of Department.

The position is part of a four year interdisciplinary  research project funded by the Norwegian Research Council. NTNU is a partner in this project and Prof.  Dr. Christian A. Klöckner represents the Department  of Psychology in this project. Below you can find a  short description of the project:
Consumer‐behaviour has significant impact on the  transition to a low‐carbon energy system. Implementation of energy efficiency measures,  flexible consumption, and adoption of new  technology in private households can contribute to  power the need for new energy infrastructure, reduce GHG emissions, lowering the cost of the  energy transition and minimize nature interventions. Today, energy consumer behaviour tends to be  studied by three disconnected research traditions. From a technoeconomic modelling perspective,  there is a gap between what models predict to be the cost‐optimal action and what consumers actually do, because such models struggle to analyse complex situations where interactions may lead to ‘emergence’ and new kinds of patterned behaviour. Agent Based Modelling typically allows for the understanding of such complexity in structured analysis of small populations, but is often based on assumptions of ‘atomic individuality’, hence seldom dealing with interactions between broader social structures and individual change.

Finally, socio‐technically oriented analysis of behaviour in transitions tends to pay great attention to complex emergent processes, but tends to avoid making predictions or scenarios based on current trends. BEHAVIOUR brings these complementary perspectives together, to study the energy behaviour of private households by interdisciplinary research. We address the role of individual and socially structured human behaviour and will bridge impirical observations with a modelling framework capturing human energy choices in interaction with the energy system. We will evaluate various instruments that can narrow the gap between consumer implementation of energy efficiency, flexible energy use and new technology, and their techno‐economic potentials respectively. Further, their corresponding value and impact on the energy system will be addressed and quantified. To reach this ambitious goal, the project draws on a novel combination of disciplines; psychology, science and technology studies, agent‐based modelling, and energy system analysis.

The outcome of the project is two‐fold. First, the results will strengthen the decision support for e.g. the public sector, industry sector, and consumer representatives by addressing how energy behaviour can be changed to be more cost‐effective from an energy system perspective. Second, the project will strengthen the competence of Norwegian research institutions, public authorities and industrial actors by further developing methodologies for interdisciplinary research on energy behaviour, extending energy system modelling by a representation of the highly complex consumer  perspective.

The project has already achieved some of its goals as planned in the first two years and a first agentbased model for studying decisions about upgrading the energy standard of private houses has been developed, together with first ideas for an interface to the Norwegian energy systems model TIMES.

Also, qualitative work in the case studies has been conducted. The candidate is expected to build on this work.

You will report to Head of Department.