Paul Lohmann

Professional experience

Dr Paul Lohmann is a Behavioural Environmental Economist at the University of Cambridge, based at the El-Erian Institute of Behavioural Economics and Policy at Cambridge Judge Business School. His main research interests lie in behavioural and environmental economics, behavioural public policy and the behavioural dimensions of sustainable development. He is particularly interested in the design and empirical evaluation of environmental policy instruments and in the behavioural effects of environmental change such as air pollution and extreme weather. In his research he combines a range of methodological approaches, including field and online experiments, microeconometrics and causal inference, and large-scale evidence synthesis.

A central strand of his work focuses on the policies and interventions that can encourage healthier and more sustainable food choices and on how the environments in which those choices are made can be reshaped to support them. This spans a variety of real-world settings, from worksite cafeterias, restaurants and hospitals to online meal-delivery platforms, with recent work focusing on digital food environments and the role of algorithmic recommendations in shaping what people eat. His research has been published in journals including Nature Food, PNAS Nexus, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He recently led a meta-analysis of demand-side food-policy interventions. He also co-developed the international Ecosystem of Reviews project, which consolidates evidence on demand-side interventions for climate mitigation and is positioned to contribute to the forthcoming IPCC Assessment Report. Across this work, he uses robust causal evidence to understand not only whether policies and interventions work, but why, for whom and under what conditions.

His wider research examines the behavioural and distributional effects of environmental policy and environmental change. This includes work on how direct experience of flooding and heatwaves shapes public opinion on climate change, the effects of air pollution on cognition, innovation and social behaviour, and how appeals to emotions such as warm glow succeed or fail in motivating pro-environmental behaviour.

A defining feature of his research is its close engagement with practice. He designs and runs studies in partnership with industry and policy organisations, including the Behavioural Insights Team, Sodexo and Greener by Default, embedding experiments in the everyday settings where choices are made. This work has translated into real-world changes in how partner organisations design their food environments. His findings have informed policy debate, being cited by organisations such as the OECD, the UK Climate Change Committee and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Dr Lohmann received his PhD from the Department of Land Economy at the University of Cambridge, supervised by Professor Andreas Kontoleon, following an MPhil in Environmental Policy at Cambridge and a BSc in Economics at the University of Kent. His doctoral dissertation received the Best Doctoral Dissertation Award from the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (EAERE). Paul completed the Advancing Educational Practice Programme (AEPP) and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (HEA). He is a Centre Fellow at the Cambridge Centre for Environment, Energy and Natural Resource Governance (CEENRG) and previously a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Economics at the University of Exeter. He serves on the Steering Committee of the International Behavioural Public Policy Association and on the editorial board of the Journal of Consumer Policy.