Elisabeth Gsottbauer

Elisabeth Gsottbauer is a Professor in Environmental Economics at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, where she serves as Director of the Competence Centre for Sustainability. She also holds affiliations as a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute, a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge's C-EENRG, and at the University of Innsbruck.

• Education: PhD in Economics from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Her research focuses on applying behavioral economics to climate and environmental policy through field and survey experiments. Key areas include promoting sustainable consumption, evaluating policy instruments like carbon labels, and investigating the intersection of behavioral science with green innovation and climate communication.

Her publications appear in top journals such as Nature Sustainability, Nature: Communications Earth & Environment, The Economic Journal, and Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. Notably, she received the 2025 Research Prize for Sustainability for her work on climate behavioral interventions.

Elisabeth collaborates with industry (e.g., catering/restaurant chains), policy entities (Behavioral Insights Team-UK, Austrian/Swedish governments), and environmental NGOs (e.g., RSPB). She also contributes to open science initiatives and replication studies, and serves as Lead Author of the Austrian APCC report and Expert to the South Tyrol Climate Assembly.

Her teaching spans multiple institutions, including courses on sustainable mobility, climate economics, and behavioral-environmental policy. She actively explores visual communication of climate science through exhibitions like 'Visualizing Klimawandel'.