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PB4D7     
Behavioural Science for Planetary Wellbeing - Dissertation

This information is for the 2022/23 session.

Teacher responsible

Dr Ganga Shreedhar

Availability

This course is available on the MSc in Behavioural Science. This course is not available as an outside option.

Course content

We live on a changing planet, and need to confront multiple human-caused global challenges like climate change and mass extinction through coordinated and cooperative action. This course aims to introduce students to concepts and tools from Behavioural Science, especially environmental and ecological economics and psychology, understand to the interplay between human behaviour and global environmental and ecological change in ten lectures such as: (1) unpacking the human-nature dilemma (2) adapating and mitigating climate and environmental risks (3) conservating non-human nature (4) fostering individual and collective action (5) making organisations sustainable (6) political action and policy support (7) behavioural climate and conservation policy I: deliberation, awareness, persuasion & nudges (8) behavioural climate and conservation policy II: incentives, infrastructure & regulation (9) coping with complex and uncertain systems (10) planetary wellbeing as a societal objective. The course seeks to impart knowledge of, and critical thinking about, the interconnections between human behaviour and wellbeing, and planetary change across multiple scales and entities. Each lecture and seminar will cover individual, social and situational barriers and enablers to sustainable behaviour change. It will emphasise holistic thinking about overlapping systemic challenges and factors to keep in mind while designing integrated and context-specific behavioural interventions.

Teaching

10 hours of lectures and 10 hours of seminars in the LT.

The course will be delivered through a combination of interactive classes/seminars and lectures and supplementary interactive live activities. There will be structured learning activities throughout the course, espeically in the seminars, including student presentations and group work. 

There will be no teaching during reading week (Week 6). 

Indicative reading

  • Ostrom, E., 2010. Polycentric systems for coping with collective action and global environmental change. Global environmental change, 20(4), pp.550-557.
  • Amel, E., Manning, C., Scott, B. and Koger, S., 2017. Beyond the roots of human inaction: Fostering collective effort toward ecosystem