The Network for Integrated Behavioural Science: The Science of Consumer Behaviour, Data Overview, 2013-2022

This network-based research initiative, a collaboration among the Universities of Nottingham, Warwick, and East Anglia along with seven international and non-academic partners, employed a decentralized approach to data collection across multiple sub-projects. The overarching goal was to investigate human decision-making processes through a combination of theoretical and empirical studies. Data were gathered primarily through controlled experiments, with each research team independently designing and conducting studies relevant to their specific focus areas within behavioral science and economics. The topics covered range from individual and group decision-making under uncertainty to preferences, social norms, and cooperation. Because of the project’s distributed structure, data collection was not centralized; instead, datasets were curated and shared alongside individual publications. Researchers were responsible for depositing their data, code, and supplementary materials in trusted open-access repositories, ensuring transparency and reproducibility. This model allowed for methodological flexibility and the rapid development of a wide array of research outputs. The publications and underlaying data are available via Related resources.Our research programme, drawing on economics and psychology and at the cutting edge of interdisciplinary behavioural science, was designed to advance understanding of consumer behaviour through pursuit of three sub-themes. Theme 1 studied foundations of individual choice, with particular attention to decision processes and consumers' responses to features of their environment. Theme 2 examined how firms frame and structure environments for actual and potential customers in the light of behavioural characteristics of consumers of varying sophistication. It focussed on how firms' strategies affect and are in turn affected by competition between firms. Understanding this interaction is vital to successful regulation of consumer markets. Theme 2also studied the form of appropriate regulation directly, in collaboration with UK regulatory bodies. Theme 3 applied 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.

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Geographic Coverage:

Multiple locations but including experimental laboratories in Nottingham, Warwick and Norwich

Temporal Coverage:

2013-01-01/2022-07-31

Resource Type:

dataset

Available in Data Catalogs:

UK Data Service

Topics: