About: Nature Sustainability expert panels are independent and international convening efforts bringing together scholars and practitioners with diverse backgrounds and perspectives to focus on academic or policy-relevant debates contributing to sustainability broadly.

The opportunity: Cities, nations, and organizations around the world are increasingly using behavioral science to encourage more sustainable choices and actions among end-users. However, behavioral science for design remains fragmented and underexplored across academic disciplines and disconnected between research and practice. As a result, we’re missing high-impact opportunities to enhance global sustainability because systems-scale design decisions about everything from cities to technologies to policies determine the options for a large number of end-users over long periods of time.

The Panel: To capture these missed opportunities and advance research and practice for more sustainable design, Nature Sustainability, the new interdisciplinary journal of Nature Research, and the University of Virginia have established a ground-breaking Expert Panel on behavioral science in design towards global sustainability. Expert Panelists will develop an action plan for research and application, discussing the most influential next steps at the intersection of behavioral science, design, and sustainability.

Panel Conveners and Funders

The core conveners of the Panel are the University of Virginia’s Convergent Behavioral Science Initiative, and Nature Sustainability. The Panel also benefits from the support of the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment at Princeton University, the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, and the environmental initiative at ideas42.

Expert Panel Agenda (link)

Other Nature Sustainability Expert Panels (link)

Co-Chairs

Expert Panelists