Christian A. Klöckner

Norwegian University of Science and Technology | NTNU · Department of Psychology

Climate anxiety discourse focuses predominantly on individualised and potentially mentally disturbing aspects of emotional responses to the awareness of climate change which can silence the mobilising charge of strong emotions in response to climate change. We critically examine this perspective and explore the range, context, and perceived effects...

Riding an e-scooter under the influence of alcohol is one of the most frequently reported risky behaviours among riders in various countries, especially in the Nordic countries. What is the Number of Alcohol Units perceived to be Safe (NAUS) before riding an e-scooter? Who is more likely to report higher perceived alcohol tolerance before riding an...

Simulations and agent-based modelling (ABM) have gained momentum as techniques in the transport, energy, and technology diffusion literature to analyse the mobility transition as a complex emergent phenomenon. This study systematically reviews the application of the ABM paradigm in 86 mobility transition studies. The study reveals several research...

In the last chapter of the book, we take some of the key concepts introduced in the previous chapters and introduce the reader to two disruptive communication prototypes currently implemented and tested in the Nature in Your Face research project in Norway: the Lung Tree is an audiovisual installation making the air pollution in cities tangible thr...

The notion of being entertained to act more pro-environmentally might sound a bit far-fetched. After all, environmental decline is certainly no laughing matter. However, recent trends within disruptive communication suggest that conventional forms of entertainment media could inspire us and make us more aware of the environmental changes that are h...

Virtual reality and more specifically immersive virtual reality and experiences are a growing field. In this chapter, we explore the potential that lies in these technologies for creating disruptive experiences that change people’s ways of thinking and doing. Based on an analysis of why wicked environmental problems like climate change are hard to...

Art has always been a mirror for society, and especially activist artists aim to provoke change in societies. This chapter presents three influential pieces of environmental art that have both a high degree of political intention, as well as a relatively high level of disruption. In connection with these examples, research on art perception and the...

This chapter conducts an analysis of psychological mechanisms explaining why individuals and societies often are resistant to change and how these mechanisms might respond when confronted with disruptive communication. We will explore concepts like habits and routines, stabilizing social norms and values, lock-in situations, mechanisms behind statu...

In this chapter, we shed some light on disruptive communication across cultures. We explain differences between so called WEIRD and non-WEIRD populations, especially in regard to behavioral predictors. Subsequently we point toward important considerations, limitations, and conceptualizations such as the Culture-Person-Situation model which provides...

The first chapter aims to set the scene for the book introducing the term disruptive communication and the related concept of radical innovation, which might be an outcome of the disruptive communication processes. The chapter starts with a brief analysis of the state of the planet, the need for concrete action, and society’s non-sufficient respons...

This paper provides a comprehensive overview of field experiments utilizing social norms, commitment and price-based interventions to promote energy conservation, load shifting, and energy efficiency behaviors. Treatment effects reported in the extant literature, as well as the factors that may strengthen or dampen these effects are reviewed. We fi...

The present research investigated factors that contribute to the farmer’s behavioral intention to use biofertilizers based on a comprehensive model of environmental behavior (CADM). This study was a retrospective design, quantitative, non-experimental, causal-relational, descriptive-correlational, and applied study. This research contributed the ne...

Social movements are dissatisfied with the status quo. That unites them and mobilizes them to the streets. They express dissent and are thus an object of disruptive communication. Environmental movements disagree with political and societal responses to global environmental challenges and demand, for example, more rigorous climate protection. To ac...

As the heating of private households represents 16.5% of all EU final energy consumption, household energy retrofitting is a central part of the solution for the ongoing climate crisis. However, ABM models have not sufficiently been explored as a tool for designing policies for reducing household heating energy consumption through energy retrofitti...

Background Symptomatic cholelithiasis requiring treatment is a known side effect after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), but reported rates vary greatly. The objectives for this study were to evaluate the long-term frequency of surgical or endoscopic treatment for symptomatic cholelithiasis 10–15 years after RYGB and its relation to self-reported ab...

Reporting results from a qualitative study with 40 polish people concerned about climate change.

The social acceptability of wind farms has been researched for several decades now, with the first research tracing back to the 1980s. This paper aims to deliver a literature review within the structural framework proposed by the paper of variables influencing the acceptability of wind farms. The large amount of research published on the social acc...

Vehicle-to-grid (V2G) is a technology where electric vehicles (EVs) are able to transfer electricity back to the power network. The V2G technology allows energy systems to balance renewable energy, thus contributing to climate change alleviation. Employing a self-report online survey among Norwegian car users (n=929) in November 2021, the study aim...

Cultured meat, fish, or dairy produced in vitro are discussed as one of the most substantial disruptions the food sector might encounter in the coming decades. These cultured proteins are proposed as a potential solution to the detrimental effects industrial food farming and fishing have on the environment and animal welfare as they would allow peo...

This paper shows that interventions based on social norms and on increasing the visibility of people's decisions to others (“decision observability”) present promising pathways of generating public support for renewable energy development. In a laboratory experiment (n = 300), we show that social norms and decision observability increase support fo...

Objectives Studies have demonstrated that it is possible to prevent type 2 diabetes for individuals at high risk, but long-term results in the primary healthcare are limited and high dropout rates have been reported. Design A longitudinal design was used to study changes in participants’ diabetes risk and anthropometrics from baseline to 60 months...

Aim: This cross-sectional study explores profiles of community-residing Norwegian older adults (aged 62-95 years) in relation to their personally expressed motives for alcohol use. It specifically investigates drinking motives as they uniquely characterise alcohol consumers reporting problem and non-problem drinking assessed using the Drinking Prob...

We analyze European citizens' willingness to take climate mitigation action with data on one-time donation choices from a survey of 15,951 people across 27 nations. Responses are explored with an interdisciplinary hybrid choice model that integrates principles of psychology and economics. The results suggest that only participants who are certain a...

Understanding free-riding is central to effective household energy retrofit subsidy policymaking. We replicate a Swiss study on free-riding prevalence in household energy retrofitting in Norway (Studer & Rieder, 2019). Compared to the original studies free-riding prevalence of 50%, we find only 10%, indicating that Norwegian free-riding is low. Sim...

Identity can improve our understanding of personal climate action, particularly when climate action becomes an expression of a person’s self. However, it is unclear which kind of self or identity is most relevant. Building on a comprehensive series of eight meta-analyses (using data from 188 published articles, N = 414,282 participants) this resear...

Energy Justice (EJ) and particularly Energy equality (EE), arguably a radical conceptualization of energy justice, advocated for distributional justice and policies addressing distributional inequalities. Distributional policies are known to be contentious and often raise debates on the opportunity to interfere with the free-market allocation of go...

Iron deficiency with or without anemia is a well-known long-term complication after Roux-en-Y, gastric bypass (RYGB) as the procedure alters the gastrointestinal absorption of iron. Iron is essential for hemoglobin synthesis and a number of cellular processes in muscles, neurons, and other organs. Ferritin is the best marker of iron status, and in...

This paper describes a qualitative study on user opinion of daylight supplementation via a horizontal light pipe (HLP) applied in a test office in a building located in southern Norway. The study is part of a full-scale long-term study analysing lighting energy consumption and the photometry of supplemented light. This study employs a custom-made r...

Energy retrofitting of private housing is fundamental to reducing the environmental footprint of the building stock, and energy efficiency policies are based on assumptions of the effects of retrofitting, including those on further retrofitting, also called temporal spillover. No study has directly investigated the impact of energy retrofitting on...

This study aims to explore the variation between- and within subgroups of older adults with regard to low, medium, and high levels of self-reported quality of life (QoL) measured by the WHOQOL-BREF scale. The contribution of interacting personal and contextual life conditions to QoL was examined in a sample of 1,910 (sample frame 6,000) Norwegian m...

Objective To explore patients’ long-term experiences with drinking alcohol after Roux-n-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) for conceptualizing what may indicate problematic drinking behavior after bariatric surgery. Study Design Three-center, observational study. Patients 546 adult patients undergoing RYGB in the period 2003-2009 in Norway. Main Outcome Me...

Previous research shows that female athletes sleep better according to objective parameters but report worse subjective sleep quality than male athletes. However, existing sleep studies did not investigate variations in sleep and sleep stages over longer periods and have, so far, not elucidated the role of the menstrual cycle in female athletes’ sl...

Understanding how psychological processes drive human energy choices is an urgent, and yet relatively under-investigated, need for contemporary society. A knowledge gap still persists on the links between psychological factors identified in earlier studies and people's behaviors in the energy domain. This research applies a meta-analytical procedur...

Interdisciplinary research is especially relevant in the energy field where ambitious political targets for the energy transition require rapid advancements in technology and simultaneous developments in social norms and citizen engagement. Challenges related to interdisciplinary communication and the integration of findings across disciplines have...

Solar panels have not seen the same widespread adoption in the Nordic countries as in the rest of Europe. The aim of the paper is to investigate how house owners that have already expressed some interest in solar panels form an intention to become pilot customers in an innovative scheme to install solar panels. The main theoretical perspective for...

This paper suggests and tests a psychological model of environmental art perception and subsequent support for climate change policies. The model is based on findings from art perception and environmental psychology, which indicate that the response of the viewer to the artwork is (1) first an emotional reaction, which can be positive and/or negati...

Increasingly more people consider climate change a global emergency and emotionally charged terms such as climate anxiety or climate depression have entered public discourse. At the same time, emotions lie at the core of many psychological processes and are thus a critical component of pro-environmental engagement, as well as human health and well-...

Background The World Health Organization’s Quality of Life Questionnaire (WHOQOL-Bref) is a frequently used instrument to assess the quality of life in both healthy and ill populations. Inquiries of the psychometric properties of the WHOQOL-Bref report that the validity and reliability is generally satisfactory. However, some studies fail to suppor...

Transport and mobility systems need to be transformed to meet climate change goals and reduce negative environmental and social effects. Despite EU policies having targeted such problems for more than three decades, transitions have been slow and geographically uneven. For effective change to happen, transport and mobility research needs fresh pers...

The paper describes an innovative structured workshop methodology in garden-based-learning (GBL) called “Nature in Your Face” (NiYF) aimed at provoking a change in citizens behavior and engagement as a consequence of the emotional activation in response to disruptive artistic messages. The methodology challenges the assumption that the change neede...

This report presents 100 questions that have been identified by experts as key priorities for SSH research on transport and mobility, in order to inform and support these goals. Specifically, these questions aim: To promote SSH research in the transition towards a carbon-neutral and socially just European transport system by 2050, which caters for...

The launch of the European Union’s (EU) Horizon Europe programme provides exciting opportunities for Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH) research to contribute to the fulfilment of the EU’s ambitious policy goals on energy and climate change. This report presents 100 questions that have been identified by experts as key priorities for SSH research...

Liselotte J. Roosen recently completed a PhD in Environmental Psychology at the NTNU in Trondheim, Norway. The topic of her PhD was Environmental Art for Environmental Engagement, in particular exploring whether visual art can change the way we think and feel about global environmental issues. This article describes the findings of the first data c...

The importance of adequate sleep for athletic functioning is well established. Still, the literature shows that many athletes report sleep of suboptimal quality or quantity. To date, no research has investigated how bidirectional variations in mental and physiological states influence sleep patterns. The present study, therefore, investigates recip...

This study examined whether, and the extent to which, the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management programme predicted positive development of children's emotional, behavioural, and social adjustment through changes in the child-teacher relationship. Using data from a longitudinal quasi-experimental intervention trial with a matched control co...

That social desirability might be a confounder of people's survey responses regarding environmental actions has been discussed for a long time. To produce evidence for or against this assumption, we conducted meta-analyses of correlations between social desirability scales and self-reports of environmentally relevant behaviors, intentions, and (bro...

Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB), implies a considerable weight loss during the first two years after surgery. Excess skin due to rapid weight loss might affect self-esteem, decrease quality of life and be a hindrance to physical activity. Removing excess skin might reduce secondary weight regain. Among plastic surgeons, a BMI <30 kg/m2 is usually r...

Background. Board games are a promising, yet rarely used arena for learning about environmental issues. Existing research suggests that they are highly innovative communication tools that make complex sustainability problems more salient and easily understandable. To date, little to no research exists where several environment-themed board games ha...

In recent years, the concept of ‘energy justice’ has attracted much attention and research effort. While all policy issues related to energy justice are worthy of further study, the time constraints posed by the looming threat of climate change suggests the need for coordinated policy research efforts. At the current stage of development of Europea...

Background Iron absorption is disturbed after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) and iron deficiency with or without anaemia affects almost half of all patients. Intravenous iron is an option when per oral iron is insufficient or not tolerated. This study explores whether routinely offering intravenous iron treatment when iron stores are empty can pre...

This investigation derives its impetus from public health concerns around detecting, mitigating, and preventing the deleterious effects that alcohol use can cause particularly in advanced age. We aim to complement gerontological research by exploring the interactive effects of quality of life and related factors on alcohol use outcomes assessed by...

Clothing production has high impacts on the environment, with a reduction in the consumption of clothes providing a contribution towards urgently needed sustainable production and consumption. The present study employs the comprehensive action determination model (CADM) to identify psychological determinants associated with reduced clothing consump...

This report provides the technical backstop to the ECHOES 5.1-Comparative Assessment Report on European Energy Lifestyles. The document presents in detailed the methodology, assumption and data sources used for the calculation of cumulative energy demand per survey respondent. The calculation of cumulative energy demand by respondents is based on a...

Research into the use of videogames in education is on the rise, and they are cementing their position as part of the modernized, digital classroom. Sustainability education has also become a subject of interest among environmentally minded game developers and understanding the educational impact of such games is rapidly becoming an important field...

Background: After Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) patients are at higher risk of alcohol problems. In recent years, sleeve gastrectomy (SG) has become a common procedure, but the incidence rates (IRs) of alcohol abuse after SG are unexplored. Objectives: To compare IRs of diagnoses indicating problems with alcohol or other substances between pat...

Environmental artists have risen to the challenge of communicating the urgency of public action to address environmental problems such as air pollution and climate change. Joining this challenge, the immersive artwork Pollution Pods (PPs) was created through a synthesis of knowledge from the fields of environmental psychology, empirical aesthetics,...

International survey of the ECHOES project is a large survey dataset than contains responses from 31 countries: EU-28 (2018) + 3 countries. The dataset contains raw data in four different formats: dta, rdata, sav and xlsx. Codebook and survey questionnaire are included.

Pro-environmental behavior has social signaling value. Previous research suggests that enacting pro-environmental behaviors can signal certain personal characteristics, such as social status and trustworthiness, to others. Using an incentivized experiment, we show that people known to behave pro-environmentally are expected to be more cooperative,...

Pro-environmental behavior has social signaling value. Previous research suggests that enacting pro-environmental behaviors can signal certain personal characteristics, such as social status and trustworthiness, to others. Using an incentivized experiment, we show that people known to behave pro-environmentally are expected to be more cooperative,...

Background: Patients' perceptions of health change after bariatric surgery are complex. The aim of this study was to explore whether self-rated health (SRH), a widely used tool in public health research, might be relevant as an outcome measure after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass (RYGB) for severe obesity. Methods: This was a single-centre retrospecti...

Purpose To investigate, in adolescents referred for psychiatric services, the associations of initial self-esteem and family functioning with level and change of quality of life (QoL) over a 3-year period, over and above the effect of their emotional problems. Methods Of 1648 eligible 13–18 years old patients attending the child and adolescent psy...

This Deliverable elaborates a consolidated scientific knowledge base stemming from the correlation of the main findings obtained throughout the ECHOES project with the existing literature in order to advance consensus on the key factors and relationships driving (or meaningfully influencing) specific energy choices and related behavioural patterns...

This paper presents analyses based on data from two H2020 projects coordinated by the author. In ECHOES, energy choices of consumers are studied from a multilevel perspective, including particularly the question, how choices framed as group choices (e.g., choices people living in a particular region, city or country) differ from choices framed as i...

Little is known about the mechanisms through which routine outcome monitoring (ROM) influences psychotherapy outcomes. In this secondary analysis of data from a randomized clinical trial (Brattland et al., 2018), we investigated whether the working alliance mediated the effect of the Partners for Change Outcome Monitoring System (PCOMS), a ROM syst...

Environmentally themed art is increasingly addressed in research as a means to raise awareness of environmental problems and motivate proenvironmental behavior. However, as researchers begin to systematically study environmental art, influencing factors must be addressed—for example, the effect of presenting contextualizing information. In the pres...