Research Activity & Outputs

Our research programme draws on economics and psychology at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary behavioural science, to advance understanding of consumer behaviour.  At the heart of NIBS is the multilateral collaboration at three major centres for behavioural social science. These are the: 

• CeDEx Centre (University of Nottingham)
• Behavioural Science Group (University of Warwick)
• CBESS Centre (University of East Anglia).

This provides the hub for a broader behavioural research network, involving both a wider range of disciplines and world class researchers from North America and Europe. 

Under NIBS 2 the Network has focussed on the science of consumer behaviour, through three main themes:

• the foundations of individual choice, with particular attention to decision processes and consumer responses to features of their environment.
• how firms frame and structure environments for actual and potential customers in the light of behavioural characteristics of consumers of varying sophistication. This will also focus on how firms' strategies affect and are in turn affected by competition between firms, and we will study the form of appropriate regulation directly, in collaboration with UK regulatory bodies. 
• lessons of behavioural science to personal and household financial decision making - an area of consumer behaviour that typifies the combination of choice between multiple, complex products; uncertainty; time; and potential for serious consumer detriment.

More precisely, our objectives are to:

1. Develop and disseminate cutting edge cross-disciplinary basic research on the behaviour of consumers and consumer markets;

2. Conduct timely, high impact, applied research on these topics in close collaboration with non-academic partner organisations including the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA);

3. Generate a significant body of evidence to inform a wide audience interested in understanding the behaviour of consumers and markets and its implications for consumers, regulators and industry;

4. Enhance capacity in world class cross-disciplinary behavioural science to reinforce the UK's position at the forefront of behavioural science research. 

The quick links on the right can be used to further explore our NIBS themes, research outputs including publications, and awards made by NIBS through our 'small grant' programme.