Who are we?

'We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.' - Aristotle

Who are CSBCI?

Based in the Faculty of Business and Law at the UWE, CSBCI adopts an inter-disciplinary, multi-method approach to the study of behaviour change and influence. With expertise ranging from social marketing to behavioural analytics, nudge to social policy, and attitude-behaviour links to ideology, the membership of the Centre reflects our belief that significant advances in the behaviour change field are only possible by bringing together both complementary and opposing perspectives.

Our origins - Bristol Social Marketing Centre

CSBCI began in 2007 with the formation of the successful Bristol Social Marketing Centre (BSMC). BSMC established a reputation for ground breaking social marketing research and interventions in a range of areas, including travel behaviour, early detection of cancer, breast-feeding and fire safety. More recently this work has expanded significantly to include approaches well outside the focus of social marketiThe Bristol Social Marketing Centre word cloudng, including sentiment analysis of social media, social networks and influence, privacy and security attitudes and inter-personal influence. The development of a Behavioural Research Lab within BSMC moved the focus further from a single approach, and led to the move to rename and refocus the centre more widely to behaviour change and influence.

Research

Much of our research is concentrated in social-cultural and socio-psychological insights with the goal of understanding, predicting and changing behaviour in a range of areas, including travel mode choice, health behaviours, security and privacy choices, inter-personal interaction, sustainability and community.

Members

Members of Centre for the Study of Behaviour Change and Influence come from a number of diverse disciplinary backgrounds (including applied and social marketing, social policy, health promotion, social and applied / cognitive psychology, media studies, human factors and computer science). The Centre is therefore able to bring a wide range of approaches, skills and competences to questions of behaviour change.

Project Work

Members of CSBCI have been involved in projects funded to the tune of over £10 million from more than 60 successful projects from a variety of sources, notably the Department for Transport (DfT), Department of Health, Sport England, Cancer Research UK, the National Health Service, UK Research Councils (ESRC/EPSRC), EU Framework 7, as well as central and local Government. It hosts the ESRC seminar series on “Behaviour change: past, present and future’.

CSBCI projects have achieved national and international standing, for instance in the use of social marketing in cancer detection, and members are on the editorial board of international academic journals as well as advisors to the UK Government, EU and larger corporations. In addition, the members of the centre have won numerous awards, including Best Paper at the Academy of Marketing, Dean’s Prize for Research Excellence, Golden Mouse Award (for best research video at ACM CHI) and Literati Awards.

Collaborations

CSBCI has welcomed international visiting academics and PhD students, and continues to welcome visitors from academia, the public sector and commerce.