prof.dr. HP (Harm) Veling

Harm Veling is professor and chair holder of Consumption and Healthy Lifestyles (CHL) at Wageningen University & Research, where he leads a multidisciplinary team of psychologists, sociologists, and health scientists. His career reflects a shift from fundamental psychological behaviour change research toward a chair group in which understanding and changing behaviour from a multidisciplinary perspective is central. Previously, he was an associate professor at Radboud University, where he led the master's track Behaviour Change and shaped the accompanying curriculum renewal.

At Wageningen, he focuses on the strategic positioning of the CHL chair group and the development of research and education at the intersection of behaviour change, health, and sustainability, with attention to both individual and systemic factors. He obtained his PhD in 2007 from Radboud University and has since supervised dozens of PhD candidates, postdocs, and thesis students, drawing on grants from, among others, NWO, ZonMw, NIH, and Horizon. He also regularly advises governments and organizations on the application of behaviour change, chairs the Open Science Community Wageningen, and is a board member of the Association of Researchers in Health Psychology and of the Platform Gezondheids- en Medische Psychologie.

Together with Daniela Becker (Radboud University), he developed the VEM-BC: a model of behaviour change that places the direct experience of behaviour at its core.

The underlying idea is that people sustain behaviour primarily when they experience it as valuable and rewarding, not just because they intend to. His research examines how such experiences can drive lasting change, through psychological mechanisms as well as cultural practices and the environments in which people live. He applies this work particularly in the domains of health and sustainability.

The model rests on five key principles:

a) The environment determines which behavioural options are available

b) Behaviour is driven by the attractiveness of the options a person considers at a given moment

c) This attractiveness is relative: people weigh options against one another; and this can be done automatically or more deliberatively

d) The attractiveness of an option is shaped by reward/punishment, social value, and self-related value

e) The experience of behaviour determines whether an option is considered again in the future and whether the behaviour is repeated

Link to VEM-BC paper:  https://doi.org/10.1080/17437199.2026.2677515

• Radboud Universiteit (1-5-2025/31-12-2099)
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