Debora Costa successfully defended her doctoral dissertation
Debora Costa earned a PhD in Business Administration at the Chair of Marketing for Social Impact, URPP Social Networks.
Debora defended her PhD thesis on the topic of “From Individual Choices to Social Good: Understanding Consumer Sustainable Behavior Change” in front of the examining committee: Prof. Dr. René Algesheimer (supervisor) and Prof. Dr. Valéry Bezençon (co-examiner).
The dissertation examines long-term behavioral changes in sustainable consumption, focusing on key psychological and societal factors. It includes three studies: the first introduces Latent Models to track individual behavioral shifts over time using digital data; the second identifies counter-intentional habits as a core barrier to sustained sustainable behavior through analysis of a decade of food-related consumption data; the third examines how major societal disruptions, like the COVID-19 pandemic, influence environmental values using Twitter data. Together, the studies advance sustainable marketing by highlighting the role of habits, values, and longitudinal methods in driving lasting behavioral change.
The entire group congratulates Dr. Costa on an outstanding contribution to research!