Alexandra is working as a postdoc at PIK on the project "Promoting Sustainability Awareness through Participatory, Interactive Climate Experiments", which is funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU). She holds a PhD in economics and social sciences. Alexandra's research interests focus on the potential and design of interventions to promote climate action and sustainable consumption.
As part of the DBU project, Alexandra is responsible for the social scientific evaluation of a browser-based, scientific climate change simulation called "SCIARA" ("time travel to the climate future"). The idea behind SCIARA is to have real people interact with socio-ecological and technological models in controlled simulation studies. This should help to understand how changing framework conditions, e.g. with regard to the design of political measures against climate change, affect human behavior. On the other hand, SCIARA's broader goal is to increase participants' awareness of climate change and empower them to take effective action against it.
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14412 Potsdam
ORCID
Alexandra joined PIK in October 2021. Previously, she worked at the University of Potsdam on two transdisciplinary collaborative projects funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (Social-Ecological Research funding program, 2015 to 2021). As part of her position at a business administration professorship with a focus on marketing, she also repeatedly took on teaching responsibilities. Alexandra received her PhD in 2018 with her dissertation on "The role of human values in sustainable consumption" (summa cum laude). She holds a master's degree in business administration.
Alexandra's research has focused on the social-psychological and cultural determinants as well as consumer decision-making processes related to sustainable and climate-friendly consumption styles. Alexandra has developed and experimentally evaluated educational and communicative sustainability interventions, but has also studied, for example, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumers and the occurrence of rebound effects in the context of sustainable consumption. Currently, Alexandra is also particularly interested in the determinants of political attitude towards climate change measures.
In her studies, Alexandra mainly relies on quantitative methods (e.g., structural equation modeling, regression, cluster analysis), but she also likes to use qualitative methods for exploration purposes.
"Promoting sustainability awareness through participatory, interactive climate experiments", funded by the German Federal Environmental Foundation (DBU)
