Overview

Tim is a senior research fellow in the Strategy, Marketing and Entrepreneurship department within Kingston University's Business School. He is primarily concerned with human behaviour change - in particular with regard to householder and small business responses to natural hazards, with a special emphasis on their attitudes towards flooding and how they might protect themselves from it.

Research into lay responses to flood risk forms an important part of the work Tim carries out. He provides consultancy and advice to the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Environment Agency on this subject, has recently completed research into how small businesses respond to flood risk and has evaluated a scheme that provided individual households and businesses with property-level flood protection.

"Flooding is become more frequent and with the impending end in 2013 of the voluntary agreement between government and the insurance industry, insurers will soon be able to refuse to provide cover for households in high flood risk areas. This is not an issue we can afford to ignore," says Tim. "Climate change, and its fall-out (such as increased flooding) will happen regardless of any changes in carbon emissions, so - we need to see how people can learn to adapt."

To that end Tim is also working on CHARM, a Kingston University collaboration that is investigating the use of the social norm to "nudge" people into acting in a more sustainable way. "The idea behind CHARM is to see if you can change people's behaviour by feeding them information about how their neighbours are behaving - for example how much electricity they are using. For instance if people perceive the social norm is to use less electricity, they might want to be more like their peers by also using less." 

Tim is also working on a project designed to help adolescents deal with Type 1 diabetes. "We are investigating whether by using a mobile phone app - an example of the kind of technology teenagers appear most comfortable with - you can encourage them to adapt to their condition in a way that enables them to live a normal life without at the same time damaging their health."