Konrad Kober

Short biography

Research Interest

• Dishonesty and ethical decision-making
• Moral self-regulation (licensing, cleansing, consistency)
• Sustainable consumer behavior
• Behavioral and experimental economics

Research Projects

People want to act ethically and sustainably, but behavior often falls short of intention. Worse, doing something good can paradoxically license doing something bad later. My research asks: when does this pattern hold, when does it reverse, and what determines which direction it takes?

To answer this, I combine formal models with laboratory and online experiments. On the theoretical side, I build game-theoretic frameworks that clarify how moral self-regulation shapes behavior in strategic settings. On the empirical side, I run experiments that track moral self-image directly, rather than inferring it from behavior, and develop measurement tools that capture evaluative judgments existing research misses. Throughout, the aim is to test the boundary conditions that determine whether self-regulation leads to consistency, compensation, or norm change.

The practical goal is to identify when pro-environmental and pro-ethical interventions actually promote lasting behavioral change, and when they backfire by giving people a moral license to do less.