The complexity of behaviour in relation to health, safety and sustainability: A psychological network approach

Understanding behaviour in relation to health, safety and sustainability is a complex challenge that benefits from a broad and encompassing approach. An approach that allows for adopting a complexity perspective in empirical research is that of psychological networks. This dissertation evaluates how adopting such an approach in empirical research improves the understanding of behaviour in relation to issues in health, safety and sustainability. It does so through six empirical case studies that cover these domains via the topics of plastic medical devices, the COVID-19 pandemic and risk perceptions of the process industries. The empirical chapters show that different issues show different network structures in which different determinants are relatively important for the behaviour of interest. This result suggests that a psychological network approach provides in-depth insight into the interplay and mutual dependence of behavioural determinants specific to the issue. Such tailored insights are important as they can improve the effectiveness of behavioural interventions in the context of specific issues. Moreover, this dissertation provides recommendations for researchers who want to employ a psychological network approach in the format of a practical guideline. Adopting a psychological network approach in accordance with the guideline in this dissertation will likely further advance research into behaviour in relation to issues in health, safety and sustainability and enables researchers to integrate these domains. To conclude, this dissertation contributes to the scientific debate on the added value of a psychological network approach by providing an applied perspective based on empirical social psychological research.