For a few decades, growthism has been the dominant narrative for thinking about the main goals of our societies. But this was not always the case. With pessimism or optimism, some key thinkers, such as Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, believed that societies would eventually reach a stationary state and have to organise themselves without growth. More recently physicists and ecological economists, among others, have pointed out that there are physical limits to growth, and that the global economy is bounded, challenging dreams of endless economic growth on a finite planet. Many have observed that the pursuit of growth at all costs may actually have irreversible negative consequences for human well-being and planetary health. Not surprisingly, nowadays, the majority of climate scientists seem to be sceptical about growth as a response to climate change. In any case, growth prospects in rich countries are quite low, and some models show that incomes are even expected to fall in the coming decades. So the question may not be whether we will live in post-growth societies in the future, but what kind of post-growth societies do we want to live in the future?
The Post-Growth Transformation Lab in LSE's Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science addresses this question by using psychological and behavioural science to explore how people think and act towards the societal and behavioural changes needed to live in prosperity without growth. In doing so, the PBS Post-Growth Transformation Lab contributes to the science of wellbeing within planetary boundaries by linking psychological and behavioural science with post-growth research on Doughnut Economics, the Wellbeing Economy, and the Degrowth movement.
Projects
Our past and current projects explore several post-growth-oriented questions.
- What are the psychological underpinnings of people’s propensity to engage in transformative change (Basso & Krpan, 2022; Krpan, 2024)?
- How can psychological and behavioural science help understand and communicate support for a degrowth economy (Krpan & Basso, 2021; Krpan et al., under review)?
- How can psychological and behavioural science help inform post-growth interventions (Basso & Krpan, 2023; Krpan et al., 2025), societal visions (Basso & Herrmann-Pillath, 2024), or management practices (Krpan, Miles & Basso, in preparation; O’Dell, Basso & Shreedhar, under review)?
Lab members
PBS faculty
Dr Dario Krpan
Associate Professor in Behavioural Science and Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), University of Surrey (UK)
Visiting scholars
Dr Dallas O’Dell, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute of Environmental Science at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain
Collaborators
Ms Jeni Miles, independent business consultant, UK
PhD students
Ms Anastasia Nazarava, PhD Candidate, PBS, LSE (starting Sept. 2025)
Ms Sarah Brunow, PhD Candidate, PBS, LSE (starting Sept. 2025)
References
- Basso, F., & Herrmann-Pillath, C. (2024). Embodied Market Utopia: Human Flourishing in Economic Life. In Embodiment, Political Economy and Human Flourishing: An Embodied Cognition Approach to Economic Life (pp. 477-577). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54971-7_8
- Basso, F., & Krpan, D. (2022). Measuring the transformative utopian impulse for planetary health in the age of the Anthropocene: A multi-study scale development and validation. The Lancet Planetary Health, 6(3), e230-e242. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00004-3
- Basso, F., & Krpan, D. (2023). The WISER framework of behavioural change interventions for mindful human flourishing. The Lancet Planetary Health, 7(2), e106-e108. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00336-9
- Krpan, D. (2024). Agenda for psychological and behavioural science of transformative behavioural change. Behavioural Public Policy, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/bpp.2024.30
- Krpan, D., & Basso, F. (2021). Keep degrowth or go rebirth? Regulatory focus theory and the support for a sustainable downscaling of production and consumption. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 74, 101586. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101586
- Krpan, D., Basso, F., O’Dell, D., Hickel, J, & Kallis, G. (in press). A call for psychological and behavioural science on degrowth. Nature Human Behaviour
- Krpan, D., Basso, F., Hickel, J, & Kallis, G. (under review). Public support for degrowth
- Krpan, D., Miles, J., & Basso, F. (in preparation). A post-growth assessment for behaviour change interventions in business organisations
- O’Dell, D., Basso, F., & Shreedhar, G. (under review). Translating the two tales of system-level change to individuals: Experimental evidence on avenues to communicate about degrowth and green growth