Study level

  • PhD
  • Master of Philosophy
  • Honours

Faculty/School

Faculty of Science

School of Information Systems

Topic status

We're looking for students to study this topic.

Research centre

Centre for Future Enterprise

Energy Transition Centre

Supervisors

Dr Kenan Degirmenci
Position
Course Coordinator
Division / Faculty
Faculty of Science

Overview

Energy transitions are often studied in sectors such as transport (e.g. electric vehicles) and housing (e.g. solar panels, batteries), where decisions are relatively infrequent, highly deliberative, and associated with clear long-term payoffs. In contrast, food consumption represents a fundamentally different energy-relevant sector: decisions are made daily or even multiple times per day, involve low deliberation, and prioritise immediate outcomes such as convenience, cost, and taste (Reisch, 2021). These characteristics make food systems particularly susceptible to short-term decision-making, where long-term energy and environmental consequences are systematically undervalued (Degirmenci et al., 2024).

Part of the Behavioural Energy Analytics & Modelling (BEAM) research group, this project investigates how AI systems shape consumer behaviour over time in food-related consumption practices. In particular, it examines how AI-mediated environments, such as recommendation systems, feedback mechanisms, and digitally mediated defaults, influence everyday choices and how these choices accumulate into long-term energy outcomes. By explicitly comparing the food sector with other energy-relevant domains (such as transport and housing), the research explores how sector-specific characteristics shape behavioural patterns over time and contribute to the emergence of behavioural lock-in.

References

  • Degirmenci, K., Barros, A., & Corbett, J. 2024. Adoption paradox of sustainable technologies: The case of renewable energy uptake by households. Proceedings of the 45th International Conference on Information Systems, Bangkok, Thailand. https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2024/it_implement/it_implement/5
  • Reisch, L. A. 2021. Shaping healthy and sustainable food systems with behavioural food policy. European Review of Agricultural Economics, 48(4), pp. 665-693. https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbab024

Outcomes

The project aims to deliver:

  • a comparative, system-level understanding of energy transitions across sectors, highlighting why food systems behave differently from transport and housing
  • novel insights into temporal discounting as a dynamic system property, rather than a static behavioural parameter
  • actionable insights for the design of AI systems and policies that better align short-term household decisions with long-term energy objectives.

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Keywords

Contact

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