Keep Scotland Beautiful announces new prize for Behavioural Science students

Charity, Keep Scotland Beautiful, has announced a new prize for Stirling Management School students – offering £500 for the best research relating to the environment.

Those studying on the MSc Behavioural Science for Management or MSc Behavioural Decision Making for Finance programmes, starting in September 2019, will be eligible for the award.

Catherine Gee, Director at Keep Scotland Beautiful, said: "We're pleased to be able to offer a research prize to support a student involved in environmental behavioural change, a key area of focus for Keep Scotland Beautiful. This support is part of a broader approach to our work with the University of Stirling. 

“We look forward to working with students to help us achieve our goal of changing behaviour to improve the quality of people’s lives and the places they care for."

The prize extends the ongoing collaboration between the environmental charity and the University’s Behavioural Science centre. Current MSc Behavioural Science for Management student, Dan Maraffi, is working with Keep Scotland Beautiful to design and evaluate a litter reduction intervention in the Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park.  Keep Scotland Beautiful has also shared the findings from some of its long-running behavioural change projects with MSc Data Science students for project work.

Programme Director David Comerford says "We hope that this prize will motivate students to apply their skills and tools to one of the most challenging problems that exists.

“From a decision science perspective, environmental management has it all: coordination failures, long time horizons, risk and uncertainty... It is also an area that features lots of problems that need to be addressed really, really urgently".