PhD researcher YuanYuan Zhou in the Department of Marketing has been given a John and Anne Benson Award - one of up to four awards given to postgraduate students each year at Strathclyde to enable them to complete their course of study either where no other funding is available or for another purpose which will make a difference to their circumstances.
YuanYuan’s research is on “The impact of normative information on greener choice” and is supervised by Juliette Wilson and Maria Karampela.
Her PhD is on promoting green consumption by interventions. This is of great importance in tackling the current environmental crisis we all face.
She explains, “The practice of green consumption often deviates from green attitudes, one way of overcoming this issue is through the design of effective nudge interventions by presenting ‘motivationally salient’ alternatives. My research investigates how normative mechanisms as informational interventions encourage consumers to make greener choices and when the normative information is more effective in promoting greener choice.
“The research findings provide evidence that activating personal norms – such as a sense of obligation - by the written personal normative message could be an effective behavioural intervention tool for promoting greener choices and this effect is greater when consumers’ private self-consciousness is not activated. The insight derived from this research could direct interventional designs when planning marketing communications for promoting green consumption.”
YuanYuan intends to use the award to support her remaining studies on the completion of her PhD work through the writing up stage.