About the position
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. …….