Supporting policy with scientific evidence

Marion is a behavioural scientist specialising in public goods and environmental issues.

She has a strong interest in interdisciplinary work. She led the work on "Unlocking the full potential of behavioural insights for policy" which shows what behavioural insights can contribute to the policy landscape and cycle, and promotes the use of a behavioural systems approach for policy. She is currently developing a behavioural systems approach through her project on barriers to implementing EU green policies by combining behavioural insights with foresight and design for policy. Marion is also involved in various projects where she applies behavioural insights to biodiversity conservation and restoration, waste sorting labels, energy investment decisions, energy savings at work and water resilience.

Before joining the JRC, she was a researcher at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden. Her research tackled a broad range of issues such as the distribution of social preferences in changing environments (e.g. equal vs unequal opportunities); the ways carbon tax acceptability could be improved (e.g. provision of social information, reconsideration of the notion of social justice in combination with the ecological transition); the behaviour of actors from the private sector towards the environment (e.g. determinants of their choice of safer alternatives to toxic chemicals) and; the consequences of ignoring a successful bottom-up democratic strategy on citizens’ emotions and mobilization in social media (e.g. the case of the European Citizens Initiative on glyphosate).

As for her background, Marion is an engineer and obtained a PhD in Economics at the University of Paris Nanterre (2017) that dealt with how the structure of preferences affects decision-making in relation with public goods and the environment.