
People’s perception of biodiversity loss: Validation of a scale in Germany
How do people perceive this urgent but hidden crisis, and what determines their perceptions? To address this question, we developed and validated the Biodiversity Loss Perception Scale (BiLoPS), which measures people’s perceptions of the reality, causes, and consequences of biodiversity loss.

Good intentions, limited action: when do farmers’ intentions to adopt sustainable farming practices turn into actual behaviour?
Past use and knowledge of cover crops, perceived need for adaptation, being risk seeking in farming, and using advisory services predicted intentions, whereas only past use of cover crops predicted both intention and actual adoption. Moreover, only the strongest level of reported intentions had some value in predicting actual behaviour.
Featured publications

People’s perception of biodiversity loss: Validation of a scale in Germany
How do people perceive this urgent but hidden crisis, and what determines their perceptions? To address this question, we developed and validated the Biodiversity Loss Perception Scale (BiLoPS), which measures people’s perceptions of the reality, causes, and consequences of biodiversity loss.

Good intentions, limited action: when do farmers’ intentions to adopt sustainable farming practices turn into actual behaviour?
Past use and knowledge of cover crops, perceived need for adaptation, being risk seeking in farming, and using advisory services predicted intentions, whereas only past use of cover crops predicted both intention and actual adoption. Moreover, only the strongest level of reported intentions had some value in predicting actual behaviour.

‘Yes, we care’: pro-environmental social identity framing to promote acceptance of decentralized wastewater treatment systems
Decentralized wastewater treatment systems can help mitigate the water crisis. Their successful implementation depends not only on their technological design but also on the level of public support.

The climate anxiety compass: A framework to map the solution space for coping with climate anxiety
We introduce the Climate Anxiety Compass: a framework that classifies strategies individuals can use to cope with climate anxiety along three dimensions: (a) problem-focused or emotion-focused, (b) mitigation or adaptation, and (c) individually oriented or collectively oriented.

Social Tipping Games: Experimental Paradigms for Studying Consumer Movements
We introduce a collection of experimental paradigms that allow researchers to examine when and how consumer movements can provoke a change across a social network over time: social tipping paradigms grounded in game theory.

Unveiling citizens’ perspective on citizen assemblies among participants and non-participants of a citizen assembly on energy
In contrast to conventional wisdom, decision-making power was not the key driver of public acceptability of the Dutch Citizen Assembly on Energy — engaging in dialogue and deliberation might be more important to citizens than having more power per se.

How bottom-up and top-down governance of community energy initiatives affects citizens’ perceptions, acceptability, and willingness to join
Results of three experimental studies and surveys (Ntotal = 3135) conducted in four EU countries show that community members' involvement, but not external parties' involvement, in CEI governance promotes perceived efficacy and identity leadership of the CEI, and thereby its acceptability and people's willingness to join.

A social network approach to community energy initiative participation
This perspective paper argues how a social network approach can contribute to creating a more comprehensive picture of how individual and community characteristics influence participation in community energy initiatives (CEIs).

Responsible carbon dioxide removals and the EU’s 2040 climate target
All carbon dioxide removal options come with varying environmental externalities, costs, and social implications, thus requiring a multidisciplinary approach for the analysis. The NEGEM project15 has taken many of these necessary steps to study the deployment of responsible negative emissions and their contribution to achieving climate neutrality.

Are we on the same page? Understanding value similarity and its impact on public trust in institutions of the energy sector
Perceived value similarity and trust in institutions are higher when people perceive institutions to have stronger biospheric values than themselves and when they expect institutions to be less egoistic than themselves.

Citizen assemblies should involve citizens as experts on their own values
Associate professor Goda Perlaviciute proposes a paradigm shift that creates explicit room for citizens’ values in citizen assemblies (CAs). Using concrete examples, she illustrates how every step of CAs could be transformed to elicit citizens’ values: from citizen selection, to setting the remit, facilitating the discussion, and shaping and institutionalizing policy recommendations.

Do I Perceive That We as a Community Can Persist, Adapt Flexibly, and Positively Transform? The Relationship Between Collective Transilience and Community-Based Adaptation
Collective transilience reflects the extent to which people perceive they can persist, adapt flexibly, and positively transform as a community in the face of climate change.

Perceived distributive fairness and public acceptance of a policy mandating on-site wastewater treatment and reuse
On the example of Bengaluru, India, where such a policy exists, this online study (N = 350) analysed whether policy acceptance can be explained by the perceived policy outcome for different groups of society (i.e. the distribution of the policy’s costs, risks, and benefits among these groups), and whether this relation is mediated by perceived fairness.