When does green be­ha­viour spread – and when does res­ist­ance? CBS re­search­ers re­ceive ma­jor grant to find the an­swer

Why do some people suddenly start eating more plant-based food, give up their cars or invest in green energy? And what does it take for green behaviour to catch on and begin to spread?

These are some of the questions that Associate Professor Kristian Roed Nielsen and Postdoc Alice Pizzo will examine in the research project (Un)sustainable Tipping Points, which has just received funding from the Independent Research Fund Denmark under the theme Green Research.

The project builds on the idea that human behaviour can spread – like a virus – where one person’s actions can influence the decisions of others.

“We are affected by each other more than we think,” explains Kristian Roed Nielsen.

“When your neighbour installs solar panels or your friends start choosing trains instead of flights, it may prompt you to rethink your own habits. But how many people’s actions does it actually take before we change our own behaviour? That is one of the questions we want to explore.”

The aim is to understand how sustainable actions such as investments in green projects or choosing a plant-based diet spread through social influence, within close networks and through observations of others, and when small changes grow into large-scale movements, the so-called tipping points in the green transition.

Resistance spreads too

In addition to uncovering how sustainable actions spread through social influence, the project will also shed light on how counter-reactions emerge.

In this way, it will challenge the common assumption that social change always moves in one direction and instead show how waves and counter-waves can arise, making green behavioural transformations difficult to achieve as well as potentially reversible, says Kristian Roed Nielsen:

"Just as action can lead to more action, resistance and skepticism can also spread. The latter is especially true when green behavior is connected to values and identity."

According to the researcher, it is therefore about creating a more realistic picture of the green transition and about giving society’s actors a better foundation for supporting it.

"In the long term, this knowledge can help us both to understand how green behavior becomes self-reinforcing and how social reactions can slow down or reverse the development," explains Kristian Roed Nielsen.

Together with Postdoc Alice Pizzo, he will analyse data from digital platforms where thousands of people invest in sustainable as well as non-sustainable projects and combine it with experiments and surveys.

“By combining these methods, we can understand how social contagion actually works in practice – who reacts when, and where the threshold lies between small changes and explosive, self-reinforcing behavioural shifts. This knowledge can help us see what drives green behaviour – and what stops it,” says Kristian Roed Nielsen.

Green research across disciplines

The grant for (Un)sustainable Tipping Points is part of the Independent Research Fund Denmark’s theme Green Research, which has awarded a total of DKK 145 million to 21 research projects across disciplines.

The aim is to generate new knowledge that can push forward the green transition – from eco-villages and climate forests to the role of democracy in addressing climate change.

According to DFF’s chair, Professor Jan O. Jeppesen from the University of Southern Denmark, the projects are characterised by both academic diversity and societal relevance:

“The projects cover a wide range of topics, but what they share is their attempt to address some of the complex challenges we face in the green transition.”

Read the press release from the Independent Research Fund Denmark