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Two researchers from Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) have received Veni grants from this year’s NWO Talent Programme for researchers who have recently graduated. The grants totalling € 640,000 from the Dutch Research Council (NWO) announced on 17 July mean they have the next three years to develop their ideas further. The grants have been awarded to Assistant Professor Antonia Krefeld-Schwalb for her research on behaviour changes for climate change mitigation that asks for contributions from the public, and Assistant Professor Sameer Mehta for his research on designing data ecosystems to give people meaningful control over their data.

Developing efficient mitigations

Dr Antonia Krefeld-Schwalb from RSM’s Department of Marketing Management will receive € 320,000 for her project Heterogeneous Treatment Effects of Behavioral Interventions Towards Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation. It focuses on people making changes to their own behaviour in order to adapt to climate change, and the failure of interventions to generate large-scale and long-term behavioural changes so far. “It’s of the utmost importance to develop more efficient interventions to induce change towards climate change mitigation and adaptation,” she said. She has invited members of the public to contribute to the research by describing their own sustainable behaviour via this link: https://sustainability.rsm.nl/4k-steps 

Dr Krefeld-Schwalb’s research proposal aims to make interventions towards sustainability more effective by:

  • Identifying the reasons why people act sustainably, which may have little to do with the environmental impact;
  • finding reliable predictors for what reasons matter most to each person;
  • and designing and testing customised interventions in real-world settings.

Her research combines knowledge from cognitive science and economics, and puts them into action to generate societal impact.

Giving people control of their data

Assistant Professor Sameer Mehta from RSM’s Department of Technology and Operations Management has been given € 320,000 for his project Empowering Individuals in the Digital Economy: A Bottom-Up Approach to Designing an Ethical, Privacy-Preserving, and Viable Data Ecosystem.

His project seeks an innovative shift by exploring bottom-up data governance, which will empower individuals through collaborative data institutions. “Present-day businesses wield enormous economic power by controlling the personal data of individuals. This dominance is driven by top-down data governance in which firms decide the terms of using personal data. My goal is to design a better data ecosystem that will empower individuals by giving them meaningful control over their data and also help businesses unlock value by allowing them to obtain and use consented data ethically.” 

Dr Sameer Mehta’s project will study:

  • the economic incentives that enable the formation of bottom-up data institutions
  • how businesses should engage with such institutions, and
  • how business-to-business data sharing can promote the adoption of these institutions.

The concept of bottom-up ‘data’ institutions is relatively new and not yet studied in-depth, even though there is plenty of research on traditional bottom-up institutions such as agricultural cooperatives, labour unions, and commercial trusts.

“Data is an ‘information good’ that’s distinct from other goods. It costs almost nothing to replicate, and the data from one individual can actually reveal information about other similar individuals. And there are privacy and security concerns associated with it. These novel features create a unique set of challenges and opportunities for the analysis. The results will contribute to cooperative game theory, the literature on mechanism design, and co-opetition [cooperation and competition] games for bottom-up data governance,” he explained.

More information

Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers. www.rsm.nl

For more information about RSM or this release, please contact Erika Harriford-McLaren, communications manager for RSM, on +31 10 408 2877 or by email at harriford@rsm.nl.

 

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Bachelor / Bedrijfskunde , Bachelor / IBA , Faculty & Research , Homepage , International , Newsroom , Marketing Management , Master , MBA , Technology and operations management , China , EC for data analytics , MiM - Master in Management

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