Dario Krpan is a behavioural scientist who was trained at the intersection of social and cognitive psychology at Webster University Vienna (undergraduate) and the University of Cambridge (MPhil and PhD).
His main research interest lies in understanding transformative behavioural change in relation to sustainability and new technology. “Transformative” can be defined as “a major change to something or someone” - transformative behavioural change is therefore a major shift in someone’s behaviour that goes beyond incremental improvements. For example, somewhat decreasing the amount of travel by cars and airplanes while continuing to use them would be an example of incremental behavioural change, whereas completely abandoning cars and airplanes for travel would be an example of transformative behavioural change.
Solving many pressing challenges that our world currently faces requires transformative behavioural change. In this context, Dario studies transformative behavioural change both because it is his interest and because he sees this as a necessity. He specifically focuses on understanding this type of change in relation to sustainability and new technology for two reasons. First, the seismic effects that both the climate change and technological developments will have on our society are imminent. In that respect, it is important to understand both how human behaviours can be transformed to make the world more sustainable, and how new technologies will transform people’s behaviour. Second, it is not possible to separate sustainability from technology because new technological developments inherently impact our society’s sustainability levels in a positive or negative way and are therefore interlinked.
From a research methods perspective, Dario is a proponent of multidisciplinary research, and he is interested in combining methodologies and theoretical approaches from sciences such as economics and physics with psychology to answer the research questions that interest him. Finally, at The Inclusion Initiative (TII), he contributes to the AI and the Future of Work and Growth and Governance Hubs.