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Pau­line En­gel

Research Assistant

Subjects
Decision-making Finance Consumer behaviour Big data Digitalisation Artificial intelligence Quantitative methods

Primary research areas

Mo­bile fin­ance
I study how con­sumers make fin­an­cial de­cisions on mo­bile devices. My re­search ex­am­ines how con­tex­tu­al and en­vir­on­ment­al factors in­flu­ence trad­ing and in­vest­ment be­ha­vi­or in every­day mo­bile set­tings.
Di­git­al de­cision en­vir­on­ments
I in­vest­ig­ate how di­git­al in­ter­faces and con­texts shape con­sumer judg­ment and choice. This work fo­cuses on how at­ten­tion, emo­tions, and situ­ation­al cues in­flu­ence de­cisions in tech­no­logy-me­di­ated en­vir­on­ments.
AI-me­di­ated con­sumer de­cision
I study how AI sys­tems me­di­ate con­sumer de­cision-mak­ing by struc­tur­ing in­form­a­tion and in­ter­ac­tion. This re­search ex­am­ines how AI-gen­er­ated con­tent and con­ver­sa­tion­al in­ter­faces af­fect be­liefs, con­fid­ence, and per­ceived con­trol.

Un­der­stand­ing con­sumer de­cision-mak­ing in di­git­al en­vir­on­ments

I am a quantitative marketing researcher studying consumer decision-making in digital and mobile environments. My work examines how consumers make high-stakes decisions on digital devices and how these environments shape the psychological processes underlying choice.

A central insight of my research is that digital contexts do not merely change access to markets or information, they affect attention, emotions, and perceived control, even in consequential settings such as financial decision-making. Using large-scale field data and experiments, I study how contextual factors, such as weather and spatial crowdedness, influence mobile investment behavior. This research highlights how situational and emotional influences on investment behavior create challenges for consumer protection and the governance of digital trading platforms.

More broadly, my research examines how emerging technologies reshape consumer behavior in digital environments. I am increasingly interested in how AI-mediated systems structure information and interaction, including work on AI-generated content, misinformation, and AI-enabled services. Across these contexts, my research contributes to a better understanding of consumer decision-making in an increasingly digital and algorithmically shaped society, and provides evidence relevant for the design and regulation of digital markets.