Dr Heather Kappes

Heather Kappes has been in the Department of Management since 2012, and is Programme Director for the MSc Marketing as well as Director of Programmes for the department.

She has a PhD in Social Psychology from New York University. Her research takes a behavioural science approach to marketing, trying to understand what influences people as they pursue goals like saving money.

In 2020-21, Heather was a Fellow with the Office of Evaluation Sciences, part of the United States General Services Administration. She worked as part of an interdisciplinary team to build and use evidence in the US federal government, about topics like supporting small businesses and encouraging vaccination uptake. She also serves on the UK Money and Pensions Service’s Research & Evaluation Group.

In addition to teaching, she is interested in ensuring the quality of behavioural and social science research, and participated in the Many Labs and Reproducibility Project: Psychology as well as LSE’s Open Research Working Group.

Heather is a member of the Marketing Faculty Research Group.

Expertise

Consumer behaviour; Motivation; Behaviour change; Consumer finance / personal finance

Dr Heather Kappes studies the psychology of personal finance, looking at how adults and children think about wealth and spending, and how their beliefs predict their spending and financial resilience.

Her research is mostly quantitative, drawing on experiments and surveys.

She also has done research on a variety of public policy issues like payment integrity, vaccination, and equitable funding to small businesses, most of which is linked to her time at the Office of Evaluation Sciences.

Another line of her work comes from “big science” projects like the Reproducibility Project: Psychology and Many Labs project.

Her publications can be seen on Google Scholar.

Courses

• MG404: Consumer Insights: Behavioural Fundamentals
• MG4F9: Organisational Behaviour and Marketing for Social Entrepreneurs
• MG4F1: Marketing Action Learning Project
• MG445E: Marketing Strategy (for Executive Global MSc Management students)
• LSE Summer School: MG103: Consumer Behaviour: Behavioural Fundamentals for Marketing and Management

As a Fellow at the Office of Evaluation Sciences, part of the United States General Services Administration, Dr Kappes worked as part of an interdisciplinary team to build and use evidence in government.

During her time there, she wrote a series of blog posts, "Notes from a Fellow," for the Association for Psychological Science.

In the UK, she is part of the Research & Evaluation Group connected to the Money and Pensions Service.

Beyond public policy, Heather has a keen interest in engaging the public in research. She has led projects at the Science Museum, other museums, and community science fairs, and organised several events for children and families at the LSE Behavioural Lab. Links to blogs and videos of some of these events are available below:

• Notes From a Fellow: Combining Policy Work and Teaching | Association for Psychological Science
• Understanding how we spend our money | LSE Management Blog
• The Science of Spending | Science Museum
• LSE Behavioural Research Lab - Junior Research Day | YouTube
• Junior research days with the LSE Behavioural Research Lab | YouTube

Dr Kappes has contributed to several resources for open research at LSE, available through the Open Research Working Group.