Pau­line En­gel

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.