A single goal unites studies at the UTS Behavioural Lab – understanding human behaviour. We believe this is the key to effective decision-making and social impact.

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Transcript

So, the Behavioural Lab brings together researchers from across the UTS Business School from fields such as economics, marketing, management, and finance, and we all have the common goal of understanding how people make judgments and decisions. We then take that knowledge and try to apply it to societal issues, with the goal of improving people's decisions and also improving public policy.

Now, it turns out that meat consumption, particularly red meat, has a very high carbon footprint associated with it, and many consumers don't realise this. So, in one particular project, we created a food label that attempted to express the carbon footprint of different foods. We did this by expressing the carbon footprint in terms of the number of minutes that a light bulb would be turned on for. Our results did find that presenting this light bulb minutes equivalent encouraged consumers to shift their purchases away from beef products towards products that have a lower carbon footprint.

Since publishing our research on carbon footprint labels in the context of meals, we've been approached by some restaurants that have really embraced sustainability as a core part of their identity. We also have numerous Behavioural Insights units embedded within government organisations. There's one in the Federal Government and there's also a group in the New South Wales State Government. Once again, they employ PhD graduates from fields such as psychology and economics who have this behavioural science knowledge and are trying to embed it in all of the other teams that they work with on a day-to-day basis.

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Our research expertise includes organisational, managerial, group and individual judgments, preferences and decisions from all areas of the UTS Business School, including accounting, economics, finance, information systems, management, marketing and operations.

Many Behavioural Lab member projects start with Behavioural Lab seed grants. Ideas are often workshopped with other members at bi-weekly Behavioural Lab meetings. Recent examples of funded projects are covered below.

Nudging for sustainability – Dr Adrian Camilleri, UTS Behavioural Lab Director

Dr Camilleri, who specialises in cognitive psychology, has been working with the meal delivery service, HelloFresh, to study consumers’ responses to different types of food labelling and nudge marketing to promote meals with a smaller carbon footprint.

The art of Perseverance – Dr Elif Incekara-Hafalir, UTS Behavioural Lab Deputy Director

Persistence is, by definition, difficult. So how do we incentivise it? For this study, Dr Incekara-Hafalir, a behavioural economist, collaborated with researchers in Australia and Malaysia to present students with various reward schemes for completing quizzes. The result? A clear winner. The best incentive, it seems, is one that empowers the participant. 

Saved by the bank – Maximilian Reisner

Would you let your bank’s AI system automatically select your home loan? According to research by Reisner, an economics PhD student, if you’re a woman, you’re more likely to say ‘yes’. Operating from the Behavioural Lab, Reisner is studying consumer attitudes to digital banking with a focus on improving trust.

Upping the care factor – Associate Professor Natalina Zlatevska and Aimee Smith

Non-profits know the geographic location of their cause impacts giving: the further away it is, the more difficult it is to elicit a response. Dr Zlatevska and Smith have reviewed various marketing approaches, finding that campaigns with a single, emotive image are most effective.

Politically motivated – Dr Geetanjali Saluja

Does it pay for brands to get political? Only if it’s done right, according to Dr Saluja, whose study of a controversial Nike campaign shows that it ultimately boosted company profits. But for others, brand activism has backfired spectacularly. This project, undertaken with Associate Professor Nitika Garg, explores the impact of a consumer’s political ideology and what it means for marketing departments.

  • auctions and markets
  • choice modelling
  • consumer preferences
  • persuasion
  • policy-oriented experiments
  • prosocial behaviour
  • randomised controlled trials
  • rent-seeking contests
  • risk and uncertainty
  • time preferences and self-control
  • voting and committee decisions

If you are interested in being paid to participate in research studies conducted by members of the Behavioural Lab, you can learn more and sign up on our UTS Behavioural Lab recruitment site

Registration in our Behavioural Lab database does not commit you to participate in any particular study but will ensure that you receive email notifications about upcoming studies you can sign up to participate in. You are free to unregister yourself from this database at any time.

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If you are interested in working with members of the UTS Behavioural Lab, contact us at BehaviouralLab@uts.edu.au