Linda Steg (born 1965) is a Dutch psychologist who is Professor of Environmental Psychology at the

University of Groningen The University of Groningen (abbreviated as UG; , abbreviated as RUG) is a Public university#Continental Europe, public research university of more than 30,000 students in the city of Groningen (city), Groningen, Netherlands. Founded in 1614, th ...

. She studies the interaction between people and their environment and how people influence their local ecosystems. She was awarded the 2020

Dutch Research Council The Dutch Research Council (NWO, Dutch: Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) is the national research council of the Netherlands. NWO funds thousands of top researchers at universities and institutes and steers the course o ...

Stevin Prize.

Early life and education

Steg was born in

Ooststellingwerf Ooststellingwerf (; Stellingwarfs: ) is a Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the province of Friesland in the northern Netherlands. It is one of the municipalities of Friesland where Stellingwarfs dialect, Stellingwerfs, a dialect o ...

. She studied adult education at the

, remaining there for doctoral research, where she studied behaviour surrounding car use. She then worked at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, where she studied the factors that motivate environmentally friendly behaviour.

Research and career

Steg works in behavioural psychology, looking to understand environmental behaviour including car use, energy consumption in homes, sustainable food and reducing waste. She has sought to understand the personal and situational factors that impact pro-environmental actions. In 2013, she was made Scientific Director of the Kurt Lewin Institute. Steg has united policymakers,

non-governmental organization A non-governmental organization (NGO) is an independent, typically nonprofit organization that operates outside government control, though it may get a significant percentage of its funding from government or corporate sources. NGOs often focus ...

s, companies and consumers, and was the first to highlight that people's intrinsic motivations were key to evaluate acceptance of climate policy. In 2015, Steg was supported by the European Energy Research Alliance to evaluate public opinion on

shale gas Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s, a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and ...

. She found that the more strongly people endorsed positive values toward the environment and other people, the more negatively they evaluated gas extraction efforts. She contributed to the

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations. Its job is to "provide governments at all levels with scientific information that they can use to develop climate policies". The World Met ...

Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C The Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C (SR15) was published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on 8 October 2018. The report, approved in Incheon, South Korea, includes over 6,000 scientific references, and was prepar ...

. She stasbished PERSON, a platform that unites social scientists who are researching energy.

Awards and honours

* 2017 Member of the

Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ...

* 2019 Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion * 2020 Stevin Prize

Selected publications

* * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Steg, Linda 1965 births Living people Dutch women psychologists 20th-century Dutch psychologists 21st-century psychologists Environmental psychologists People from Ooststellingwerf University of Groningen alumni Academic staff of the University of Groningen Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Knights of the Order of the Netherlands Lion