Hi r/IAmA, I’m Anca Baker, a Senior Lecturer in Economics and a part-time PhD researcher investigating how organisations actually make decisions about evaluating, investing, and adopting new environmental technologies.
Economics can give us neat models of decision-making: you have the information, weigh up the costs and benefits, and choose the option that makes the most sense. But there is a gap between how people imagine decisions are made and how decisions actually happen.
My research looks at the people involved in sustainability-related investment and implementation, from economists and technologists, advisors to decision-makers, and asks what influences them.
This includes:
- Who actually has a say when an organisation is deciding whether to adopt green technology?
- How do varying experiences, knowledge, and personal values affect those decisions?
- What sources of information do decision-makers trust – and why.
- How to organisations make decisions in the face of uncertain futures?
- Why two organisations looking at identical technologies might reach different conclusions.
I will be online today between 14:30-15:30 GMT – ask me anything about researching green technology adoption, interviewing people in these spaces, the economics and psychology of decision-making, or what it’s like doing a PhD alongside academic work.
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