Professor
Dr.merc., PhD, MSc (Econ)

John Thøgersen is professor of economic psychology at Department of Management. He is coordinator of the Marketing and Sustainability Research Group at the Department of Management. He is also the initiator and former chairman of the steering committee of the global Virtual Community on Sustainability and Consumption. Moreover, he is connected to MAPP – Centre for research on customer relations in the food sector.

Research areas

• Consumer behaviour 
• Social and environmental marketing 
• Consumer and environmental protection 
• Spillover and the generalization of environmentally responsible behaviour
• The role of social and moral norms for environmentally responsible behaviour
• Inter-generational transfer of pro-environmental values, attitudes and behaviour
• Media influences on consumer perceptions, attitudes and behaviour

PhD students

Current

• Christos Kavvouris
• Gabriele Torma
• Ekaterina Salnikova
• Ditte Mogensen
• Louise Randers

Finished, ASB/AU

• Hans Skytte
• Michael Johansson
• Tino Bech-Larsen
• Lise Norre
• Thyra Uth-Thomsen
• Madeleine B. Toft
• Livia Marian
• Susanne Pedersen

Finished, foreign universities (co-supervisor)

• Cosmina Bradu (Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania)
• Sue Godfrey (HEC Lausanne, Switzerland)
• Clarisse Kienou (Université de Savoie,Chambéry, France)
• Katalin Lanyi (Budapest Business School, Hungary)
• Pietro Lanzini (Ca’Foscari University, Venice)
• Helena Åberg (Göteborg University)

Academic and practical experience

April 2016 -: Adjunct professor at the Department of Psychology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

March-July 2014: Visiting Scholar, Institute of vocational education and work studies, Technical University of Berlin, Germany

February-March 2014: Visiting scholar, SASIN Graduate Institute of Business Administration of Chulalongkorn University

2013: Member of Swedish research council Formas’ Review Panel 4: Resource-efficient products and processes.

Week 17, 2012: Visiting scholar, BehaviourWorks Australia, Monash Sustainability Institute, Monash University, Australia. 

Week 42, 2011: Visiting scholar, Université Paris-Dauphine. 

May-June, 2011: Visiting scholar, School of Economics, University of Maine, Orono, Maine.

2011-: External Graduate Faculty member in the School of Economics, University of Maine Graduate School.

February-July 2009: Visiting scholar, Institute of vocational education and work studies, Technical University of Berlin, Germany 

March 2007 and April 2008: Visiting Professor, the Business School of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China 

May 2006: Visiting scholar, Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Portugal

February-July 2004: Visiting scholar, Department of Social and Organizational Psychology, Leiden University, the Netherlands

2001-: Professor of economic psychology, Department of Business Administration, Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University

July 1997 and April 1999: Visiting Professor, Zentrum für Umfragen, Methoden und Analysen, Mannheim, Germany 

1995-1996: Visiting scholar, Institute for International Studies, Stanford University  

1986-2000: Associate professor, Department of Marketing

Before joining Aarhus School of Business in 1986, John Thøgersen held positions at Aalborg University, Copenhagen University and University of Sussex. He also worked a period as academic secretary for the Unemployment Research Initiative, Danish Social Science Research Council.

 
Editorial work

2016-: Member of the Editorial Board of Frontiers in Psychology, published by Frontiers. 

2015-: Member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Environmental Psychology, published by Elsevier. 

2005-: Editor of Journal of Consumer Policy, published by Springer. 

Reviews 12-15 papers a year for other journals.

Administrative experience

2011-: Member of the PhD Committee of the Department of Business Administration

2009-2015: Line coordinator for the AU-BSS MSc specialization in Consumer Affairs Management

2008-2014: Member of the programme board of and AU Programme Director for EURECA-European Masters Programme in Consumer Affairs

2003-2004: Member of the Faculty Research Committee 

2000-2004: Member of the board of Centre for Transport Research on Environmental and Health Impacts and Policy (TRIP) 

1994-2010: Coordinator of the Business Environment Research Group, later the Forum for Social Science Research concerning the Environment at the Aarhus School of Business

1994- : Coordinator of the Marketing and Sustainability Research Group (previously the Marketing and Environment Research Group), now at the Department of Business Administration

1992-1997: Member of the board of Centre for Social Science Research concerning the Environment, CeSam

1987-1993: Member of the Council and the Section Council concerning the university sector of the Association of Danish Lawyers and Economists

1987-1993: Representative for the research and teaching staff at the Faculty of Business Administration

1987-1988: Member and chairman of the Pedagogical Committee of the Staff-Student Study Committee of the Faculty of Business Administration

1986-1988: Member of the Staff-Student Study Committee of the Faculty of Business Administration

Advisory committees

2015-2018: Member of the reference group of the project “the English Plastic Bag Charge and Behavioural Spillover: A Field Experiment, Diary Study and Secondary Data Analyses” at Cardiff University, UK. 

2012–: Member of the scientific advisory board of Forschungszentrum „Verbraucher, Markt und Politik“ (Center for Consumer, Markets, and Politics) at the Zeppelin Universität in Friedrichshafen.

2009-2012: Member of the reference group of the Swedish research project “Promoting environmentally friendly behaviour through feedback: Energy saving in the household”

2008-2012: Member of the reference group of the Norvegian Norwegian research project “Environmental Policy and Human Action”

2007-2010: Member of the reference group of the Swedish research project “The metabolism of the household: Modelling the indirect environmental impact of the buying decisions of households and developing interventions to reduce emissions and system effects.”

2003-2008: Member of the reference group of the Swedish research project “Sustainable Households: Attitudes, Resources and Policy Instruments” (SHARP)

2000: Member of the expert supervisor committee for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency's project on the effectiveness of weight-based waste fees in Denmark

1999: Member of the working group on consumer policy of the Danish Consumer Protection Agency's Labelling Committee

1997-1998: Member of Council of Technology Working Group on Recycling 

1993: Member of the Swedish Waste Research Council's Programme Development Committee for research concerning the consumers' contribution to a sustainable Sweden

Service to the wider community

For many years, John Thøgersen has been a very active disseminator of research on sustainable consumption in the general media as well as to stakeholders in government, business, and the third sector, as speaker and consultant. For example, he has advised Novo Nordic, Denmark, and the Premier Group of Companies, Thailand, on their sustainability communication strategies. For organizations in the third sector, he has in recent years given invited presentations or consultations on the promotion of sustainable consumption for Etikforum, Concito’s Climate Embassy Intro Weekend, Forbrugerrådet TÆNK, Global Citizen (an AIESEC international community development program), and Copenhagen Resource Institute.

2016: Member of a four-person expert group appointed by the Board of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Environmental Research (Mistra) to write a bacground paper for a funding application call in the research area of “sustainable consumption”.

2012-14: Contributing author on sustainable consumption issues to IPCC’s 5^th assessment report (WG3: Mitigation of Climate Change).

2011-12: Engaged by the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries to develop a new export strategy for Danish organic food products, together with stakeholders from industry, government, NGOs and research. John Thøgersen served as main author of the strategy report and a handbook on export readiness in Danish organic food companies.

2011-12: Advised the Thailand Ministry of Commerce on an export strategy for Thai organic food products to Northern Europe, via the Thai embassy in Copenhagen and at two meetings in Bangkok with high-ranking officials from the ministry and industry representatives.

2009-14: Invited presentations on the promotion of sustainable food consumption at a range of events for the Danish and international food industry, including the Organic Congress, AgroTech, the Finish Food Congress and ILSI Europe Annual Symposium.

2011-12: Presentations on the promotion of recycling for the Keep America Beautiful Annual Convention and for the Waste and Recycling Conference, Western Australia. 

Teaching areas

John Thøgersen is currently teaching a master-level course in economic psycology and doctoral courses in academic writing and publishing and quantitative methods. He has also been teaching:

• Social marketing

• Consumer policy

• Consumer behaviour

• Current issues in consumer behaviour research

• Introductory marketing

• Environmental marketing

• Consumers and the environment

• Consumer behaviour and e-business

• And he has supervised a large number of BA, part-time MBA, and MSc theses as well as PhD dissertations.

Awards

2018 Appointed Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) "in recognition of outstanting contributions to applied psychology."

2015 ForskEL-prisen for the research project “READY — Heat pumps in a smart grid future”, together with a team of researchers from Aarhus University, Aalborg University, Neogrid Technologies, PlanEnergi, Ea Energy Analyses and NEAS Energy and co-ordinated by NEAS Energy.

2014 The Shelby D. Hunt Award for the most cited article the last five years in Journal of Macromarketing. Awarded for "Country Differences in Sustainable Consumption: The Case of Organic Food. Journal of Macromarketing, 30(2), June 2010.

 
Memberships

• The International Association for Research in Economic Psychology (IAREP)

• The International Association for Applied Psychology (IAAP)

• CORPUS - The Sustainable Consumption and Production Knowledge Hub

• Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI)

• RESPONDER - Linking Sustainable Consumption and Growth Debates

• Millennium Alliance for Humanity & the Biosphere (MAHB)