Mechanisms of Behaviour Change Theory (2025-2027)

Triggering behaviour change can benefit individuals (e.g., healthy eating), communities (e.g., protection via vaccination) and humanity as a whole (e.g., emission reduction via electricity saving). Yet the mechanisms by which behaviour change can be triggered are not yet fully understood because the effect of an intervention on latent theoretical constructs (intervention effect) is not routinely isolated from the effect of the construct change on the behaviour (construct effect). This project aims to develop a new theory of behaviour change that disentangles these two aspects (thus elucidating the mechanism), validate it empirically, and compare its performance with current approaches in the context of climate change mitigation behaviour.