Christian Klöckner
Prof. Dr. Christian Klöckner
Session: Circular Society - Research at the Interface of Technology, Societal Support and Individual Appropriation
Title: Where, Why, and How Psychology
is Relevant in Circular Economy
– Some Reflections Based on
Large Interdisciplinary Projects
Prof. Dr. Christian A. Klöckner is a professor in social psychology and quantitative methods at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. He leads the research group for “Citizen, Environment, and Safety” which is focusing on researching individual, social and contextual drivers of environmental decisions (including food, energy, mobility, housing). His personal research interests are modelling of environmentally relevant decisions and behaviour in the social and structural context, innovative environmental communication methods, societal disruption and transition, and psychological trade-offs in sustainability issues. He is engaged in many national and international research projects, coordinating several of them, among them the H2020 projects ECHOES, SMARTEES, and ENCHANT. In these projects, he always works in an interdisciplinary context including both other social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences, as well as engineering, which provides him with a hands-on understanding of how psychology contributes to solving societal challenges in interaction with other sciences. A recently awarded Horizon Europe project (CIRCOMOD), where Klöckner is a participant, will focus on exploring and quantifying the contribution circular economy can in climate change mitigation. Klöckner’s task will be to empirically assess the citizen acceptance of key behaviours related to circular economy practices in several countries around the world.
Where, why, and how psychology is relevant in circular economy – some reflections based on large interdisciplinary projects
The transition to a circular society requires not only changes in production processes, but also an adaption in citizen behaviour in many fields of their daily practices. The way access to products and services is realized (purchase, sharing, renting, …), the way they are used and stored, the way they are disposed of at the end of their lives, and – on a more general level – also how societal transitions are supported in political and economic processes are just some examples. The presentation will start with a general framework model, presenting the role of psychology in the greater canon of social sciences in relation to such processes. Afterwards, examples from finished and ongoing research projects will be presented in how such questions have been and can be addressed. This will include results from a Norwegian population survey on psychological plasticity of a large selection of climate related behaviours (including many relevant for circular economy practices), a waste separation intervention at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, an online design handbook for involving consumers in circularity practices in packaging recycling based on psychological theory developed by the Norwegian green dot, and some first ideas what will be focused on in the new Horizon Europe project CIRCOMOD, which will explore circular economy potentials for mitigating climate change from an interdisciplinary perspective, including psychology.