Dr Christian Krekel is Associate Professor of Behavioural Science in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at LSE and Co-Director of the Wellbeing Programme at LSE's Centre for Economic Performance (CEP), one of Europe's leading economic research centres. His research focuses on how policies and interventions affect people's wellbeing, health, and behaviour, and how these impacts can be measured and valued to support better decision-making. His work has informed governments, businesses, and third-sector organisations seeking to understand and improve outcomes that traditional economic measures often overlook.
Alongside his academic work, Dr Krekel is Principal Economist and Practice Leader of WAVE (Wellbeing Appraisal, Valuation & Evaluation), LSE Consulting's newly launched Wellbeing Research and Policy Lab, which works with clients to assess the social value of policies, programmes, and investments.
In this edition of Expert Voices, Dr Krekel reflects on emerging developments in wellbeing economics, the growing demand for wellbeing impact measurement, and his fulfilling experience with academic consulting.
In recent years, wellbeing has moved from being a niche research topic to something that governments, businesses, and third-sector organisations have growing interest in. What do you think has driven this shift?
That's a great question!
I think that two things came together: first, the science of wellbeing has matured. We now have credible ways to measure wellbeing and, importantly, to put a defensible monetary value on it, so that outcomes that matter most to people, things like health, social connection, good work, community, culture, and the environment, can finally be counted rather than left out of decision-making.
Second, that new capability has met demand: governments have started to realise that conventional policy analysis (based on money alone) was missing much of what they care about, and what value their policies provide, so HM Treasury's Green Book now allows wellbeing to be appraised directly. In a project for the Department for Education (DfE) in the UK, for example, we are helping policy-makers look at the wider (wellbeing) benefits of educational interventions beyond income, so that they can make better business cases to obtain Treasury funding for their initiatives. Businesses, on the other hand, want to understand what makes for good work and how wellbeing in the workplace can be improved to raise productivity, while third-sector organisations increasingly need to evidence the difference they make, especially when they want to attract external funding. For them, wellbeing is often the only way to credibly evidence the social value they generate for society.
From an academic's perspective, why is it important to understand how policies and investments affect people's wellbeing in particular? How is this different from the traditional economic indicators such as GDP?
Wellbeing captures far more than traditional indicators like GDP, which really measures money. Money matters, of course, and it is an important contributor to how people's lives go (and indeed becomes very important if someone is deprived). But it is only one contributor amongst many.
We as wellbeing economists treat wellbeing as an overall measure of welfare, one into which money flows, but so do many other things that shape a life, like health, social connection, and a sense of belonging. In economists' terms, we see it as a reasonable proxy for someone's underlying utility, which we cannot observe directly. That is why, for policies and investments, asking how they affect wellbeing gets closer to what actually matters to people than asking how they affect income alone. Wellbeing can also capture many behavioural scientific phenomena that money cannot, for example, that our wellbeing adapts to some changes in our life circumstances but not to others, which is very relevant when appraising policies, programmes, or investments.
Have there been any findings from your work that challenged conventional assumptions or changed the way you think about policy and public investment?
Yes, and one example stands out for me personally: a lot of my research looks at how to promote wellbeing in people's local communities, and I have looked in particular at the causal effect of volunteering, for instance through the NHS Volunteer Responders programme set up during the pandemic. We found that volunteers generate large wellbeing returns from taking part, large enough that the traditional national accounts, which value volunteering by the hours spent multiplied by the wage rate, strongly underestimate the value the voluntary sector provides to society. So, the wellbeing lens is really good at showing these hidden benefits and making a defensible case for them.
More generally, our work keeps showing that people adapt to some changes but not others. We adapt more to rises in income or private consumption than we do to things like our health or our social relationships, which don't fade in the same way. That has real implications for policy, and for employers just as much: if appraisal counts mainly the gains people get used to, like a pay rise, and overlooks the ones that last, like feeling you belong at work, being recognised, having good relationships with colleagues, or doing something that feels worthwhile, it will keep backing the wrong things, spending on what gives a short-lived improvement rather than on what raises wellbeing over the long term.
You regularly work with organisations seeking to assess the impact of their programmes and investments. What role can wellbeing-based approaches play in helping these organisations make better decisions and demonstrate value more effectively?
Wellbeing gives organisations a common currency. Because health, social connection, community, a sense of belonging, and income can all be expressed in the same unit, a Wellbeing-Year (or 'WELLBY' for short), decision-makers can compare very different options on a like-for-like basis and see which delivers the most wellbeing for the money. That helps at both ends of the policy cycle: before a decision is made, it lets a government, a business, or a charity appraise the likely wellbeing return and choose between competing options. Afterwards, it lets them show the value they actually created, including the intangible benefits that conventional methods miss, in terms Treasury, funders, boards, and auditors recognise. For the third sector especially, that can be the difference between asserting impact and evidencing it. To be clear, we do not want to replace existing analysis but to complete it, so that what matters most to people is no longer left out of the decision simply because it was hard to value.
WAVE aims to advance research in areas that directly affect people's lives, like wellbeing, mental health, and social connections. What gaps did you see in the research-world and the real-world that prompted the development of this Hub?
We saw a gap on each side, and something of a disconnect between them. In the research world, the methods for measuring and valuing wellbeing had matured, but they were spread across academic papers and moving quickly at the frontier, from valuing experiences in real time to simulating the wellbeing effects of policy, which we are now working on. They were not packaged in a way that let a government, a business, or a charity actually use them. In the real world, the appetite had actually arrived well ahead of the supply. More and more organisations wanted to put wellbeing at the centre of their decisions, but needed it done to a standard that would survive Treasury, audit, funder, and board scrutiny. And when the What Works Centre for Wellbeing in the UK closed in 2024, the field lost its main home for standards, evidence, and convening. WAVE grew out of both gaps. Our team develops the methods and applies them, so the research and the practice sit in the same place rather than being apart.
Tell us a little bit about your experience with academic consulting. What have you found most rewarding about working on consulting projects, and how has it influenced the way you think about your research?
I came to this over time. I gained some experience in strategy consulting during my studies, and then spent several years as a consultant for the World Bank. What I like about consulting is that it puts hard questions in front of you that you would rarely have to answer in academia. Right now, for instance, we are appraising the social value of having a national emergency management capacity for natural disasters, for New Zealand's National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). That is something you start almost from scratch, and it lets you be genuinely creative. In another project we have been asked to monetarily value life and death for the UK Department for Transport (DfT) using wellbeing data. These are questions you rarely come across in academic work, and they push you to apply your research to completely new territory. I find that exciting. But it also feeds back the other way: taking the methods out of the lecture room and into a live decision quickly shows you where they are robust and where they still need work, and that has shaped what I think is worth researching next and where we have to improve.
As Dr Christian Krekel's insights demonstrate, wellbeing is no longer a peripheral consideration in policy, investment, and organisational decision-making. As methods for measuring and valuing wellbeing continue to evolve, there is growing opportunity to ensure that the outcomes people care about most are reflected in the choices that shape their lives. Through his research and consulting work, and through the newly established WAVE Hub, Dr Krekel is helping organisations place wellbeing at the centre of decision-making and better understand the outcomes that matter most to people and society.
To discuss ideas on collaboration or projects with Dr Krekel and the WAVE Hub, contact LSE Consulting at consulting@lse.ac.uk.
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