Christina Gravert

Meet Christina

Christina Gravert is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Copenhagen. Her research interests include optimal policy design, nudging and sustainable behavior change. She conducts research in collaboration with public and private institutions in the fields of health behaviour and environmental sustainability. Her focus is on innovating public policy by incorporating insights from behavioral economics and establishing the use of randomized controlled trials for evidence-based decision making. Christina is the Director of the Center for Experimental Economics and the co-founder of Impactually, one of the Nordic's first behavioral insights consultancies.

1. How does your work help others or contribute to the world, and what motivated you to pursue this path?

My work as a professor and co-founder of Impactually can be divided into two main categories: creating new knowledge (research) and communicating this knowledge to others (teaching). Both of these activities contribute to expanding our understanding of human behavior, how to influence it for the better, and how to measure whether behavioral interventions have the intended effects. This increases the number of people who possess this knowledge and can apply it to solve societal problems. Early in my career, I was fascinated by human behavior and the experimental approach to research. I worked on various topics, such as charitable giving, deception, medication adherence, and the aversion to giving feedback, to improve my skills as a behavioral and experimental economist. Currently, my research focuses on understanding what motivates sustainable behavior and enhancing environmental policies, such as food consumption, food waste, electricity use, and the role of carbon taxes in changing behavior, as I believe these areas will make the most significant difference in the world.

2. Could you describe a typical day or week in your job to give us a sense of what it’s really like?

I have no boss, so I need to decide how to spend my time and what I want to accomplish. My job varies significantly over the course of a year—I travel about five days per month for conferences, talks, seminars at other universities, or board meetings. This was even more frequent before I had my daughter. In a typical week when I am not traveling, I spend approximately six hours per week working on a grant application for a new project, six hours analyzing data for an ongoing research project, and three to four hours revising an older project for journal resubmission. I might have an ethics board meeting to discuss new experiment proposals and meet with my lab assistants to discuss data collection, as I am the director of the Copenhagen Experimental Laboratory. I spend three to four hours per week attending seminars to listen to other researchers present their latest research and meeting with visiting researchers, as well as going to dinner with them. I also spend three to four hours preparing for teaching each week and another four hours on in-class teaching. I meet for an hour with one of my Master's thesis students to discuss their progress. Additionally, I spend a couple of hours refereeing research papers for journals and writing reports to suggest whether the papers should be published and how to improve them. I might get a call from a journalist for insights on a policy issue or participate in a podcast. Often, I give online presentations of my research, either for a company, an international organization, or another university. The rest of the time is spent on emails and other administrative tasks. Compared to a job in industry, my role involves fewer meetings. Even if there are joint research projects, I work independently 90% of the time. I have my own office, so some days, I only talk with a colleague if I see them in the coffee kitchen.

3. What aspects of your work do you find most enjoyable and/or meaningful?

I very much enjoy that I can decide how to spend my time and what projects to focus on. This autonomy can also be stressful because there is no one providing feedback or direction. I could work on a research project for years, and the first time I receive feedback from peers is when I present the results after three years. However, I love that almost everything I do in my work is meaningful to me. Apart from some administrative tasks, such as reporting my travel or grading exams, almost all of my work is interesting to me. I get to choose who I work with and who inspires me. Many of my research questions were inspired by conversations or things I read in the newspaper, and then I can become completely absorbed in answering the question. I also enjoy teaching students and giving talks at companies or to policymakers. Even though I have discussed behavioral economics and how to conduct experiments thousands of times, I still enjoy the topic and its potential to change the world.

4. What skills or traits make you good at what you do, and how have past experiences shaped/helped you (or not)?

To be a good researcher, one needs to be very curious and willing to dig deep. As my husband would confirm, I am the type of person who, when I want to know the answer to something, will stay up all night and end up on page 15 of a Google search. I do this for trivial things, but I also do this for my research. AI tools like Perplexity are my catnip. I ask them questions all the time. For research, these tools are still somewhat disappointing, but for general questions, it's impressive what they can compile. However, the life of a professor also requires a lot of resilience. I have research projects that I started almost 10 years ago that have still not been published in a journal. I might spend three to four years working on a project only to have two anonymous referees say it is not interesting or should have been done differently. I have policymakers asking six weeks after presenting new results, "What are you working on now?" The answer: "I will work on this same project for another two to three years until it is published." I once heard the quote, "Saying you want a PhD is like saying you want six-pack abs. You need to really love protein shakes and going to the gym every day for years if you want the results." I have been told that I am good at communicating knowledge and inspiring people. My TEDx Talk now has over 100,000 views, and my pop-science articles are widely read. This skill is something I have worked on for a long time. I have given many free talks everywhere I could before I was first paid to speak.

5. How does your type of work fit with the rest of your life?

As a PhD student, post-doc, and when starting Impactually at the end of 2017, my work was my life. I was single and easily working 70 hours per week, building the company and conducting research. I was traveling almost every week to build an international network and give talks and seminars worldwide. I loved the craziness of it all, but I also realized that this was not sustainable for me in the long run. When the pandemic came, it stopped me completely. In March 2020, I had been in Florence for a PhD defense, in Dublin for a seminar talk, and in Stockholm and Gothenburg for consulting projects, returning the day before the lockdown in Denmark. Suddenly, my hectic travel came to a halt. Six weeks later, I met my now husband. Since the pandemic, I have been much more intentional with what I say yes to, and when my daughter was born in 2023, it made time even more precious. I went on an eight-month parental leave, completely taking time away from work. Since then, I work closer to 40 hours per week and enjoy time with my family. This means I cannot do everything I am invited to do, but it has helped me prioritize a lot.

6. If money were no object or you knew you couldn’t fail, what project would you dedicate yourself to over the next decade, and why?

I am very fortunate to have a tenured position, which means that within some limits, I can research what I want without worrying about my salary. So, in a sense, money is no object. However, I do need to secure funding for research projects, which takes a lot of my time applying to foundations. My challenge isn’t the money; it is the need for collaboration with policymakers and firms. My dream is to conduct a series of impactful field experiments within environmental policy. I believe we lack sufficient knowledge on how to change behavior on a large scale to protect our planetary boundaries. For this, I need to convince the right people to work with me. I recently wrote a policy paper on leveraging field experiments for environmental policy, which I hope will help make my case.

7. From your perspective, what are some of the best ways to make a difference within or using behavioral science?

A few years ago, many people focused on "cute little nudges with big wins," but the field has since moved towards much more rigorous experimental research and embedding behavioral science within all areas of work and policy. Instead of thinking, "Where can I apply behavioral science?" I suggest people use it as one tool among many to solve important problems they are already working on. Become an expert at a problem and then see whether behavioral insights can help you solve that problem. Don’t go around trying to apply social norm nudges to everything without understanding the context. From the first talk I ever gave about nudging, I have always emphasized the importance of using the scientific process. At Impactually, we call it the BOOST model and teach it in our online course "Designing Nudges." Having an impact with behavioral science is all about the process of defining the right behavior, understanding the obstacles, designing an intervention, testing it, and scaling it up.

8. If a student or someone early in their career wants to end up working in your position or similar, what next step would most accelerate them in that path?

To become a professor, one needs to pursue a PhD. PhDs can take many years of tedious and frustrating work. As I mentioned earlier, my work can be lonely, it can take many years without feedback or rewards, and unfortunately, there are very few positions. Therefore, I think one should spend some time as a research assistant to understand the work and see if it fits with the life one desires. Also, because there are so few positions, one needs to be willing to move to a different country for the job, potentially permanently. What I strongly suggest to anyone still studying: Take the hard courses! That includes econometrics, statistics, programming, game theory, etc. The fun stuff you can still learn on the side, but you will be glad if you have the hard skills. Data analytics and programming will become increasingly important. All our current PhDs are programming in Python or R, and many companies are looking for these skills.

9. If there’s one piece of advice you could give to your younger self or people in their early careers today, what would it be?

Choose a fun topic, but a rigorous (scientific) method. Work on topics and questions that you find truly interesting. What do you think about in your free time? What do you talk to friends about? But don’t take shortcuts when trying to find the answers. The best research papers and consulting projects arise when people find the question fascinating, and the evidence is watertight.

Thank you so much, Christina, for sharing your insights and advice with us today!