Rui Wang's research on environmental decision-making and her contributions to the UMass Amherst community earned her the 2025 Carolyn Harper Fellowship Award from the Department of Resource Economics.
Presented on December 5, 2025, the award recognizes Wang's scholarship, commitment to social and environmental issues, and contributions to the department community. Established in 1993 following the death of Professor Carolyn Harper, the fellowship honors graduate students who demonstrate scholarly achievement, concern for social and environmental issues, and a commitment to racial and gender justice.
Wang's research reflects the fellowship's emphasis on environmental issues while bringing behavioral economics into questions of environmental policy. Her work examines how individual preferences, beliefs, and behavior influence responses to environmental challenges.
One project she is particularly proud of, "Shining a Light on Risk: Risk Preferences and Adoption of Residential Solar PV," was coauthored with Christine Crago and Rong Rong. Using a lab-in-the-field experiment with households that had and had not adopted residential solar photovoltaic systems, the researchers examined how risk preferences affect decisions to adopt solar energy. They found that risk preferences significantly influence both whether households adopt solar PV and when they make the decision. The findings suggest that policies that reduce the risks associated with solar adoption, including risk-mitigating insurance products, could help broaden adoption.
Her broader research also examines how people form beliefs about climate change. In her job market paper, "Correcting Second-Order Beliefs Across the Political Divide: Experimental Evidence on Climate Change Beliefs," Wang studied whether correcting people's perceptions of what others believe can influence their own climate beliefs and actions. Using an online experiment, she found that stronger pro-climate beliefs from a co-partisan source increase a person's own climate beliefs and actions, while the same information from an opposing partisan may generate backlash. The results suggest that uniform information campaigns may have limited impact on polarized issues, and that messages aligned with an audience's political affiliation offer a more promising strategy.
Wang's contributions to the department extended beyond her research. She served as a teaching assistant and recitation instructor in several courses and, in Fall 2025, taught Introduction to Resource Economics as the sole instructor. From 2022 through 2025, she also served as a Graduate Peer Mentor through the Graduate School's Office of Inclusion and Engagement, supporting graduate students and contributing to efforts focused on building a more inclusive academic community. These activities provided a direct connection to the fellowship's emphasis on racial and gender justice and demonstrated her commitment to supporting others within the university community.
For Wang, receiving the fellowship was both recognition and encouragement. "Receiving the Carolyn Harper Fellowship is a meaningful recognition of my research and an important source of encouragement during my PhD," Wang said. "I am very grateful for the support from the department and for the opportunity to continue developing research on behavioral and environmental economics."
Wang completed her PhD in Resource Economics at UMass Amherst in 2026. She is now a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego, where she is continuing her research in behavioral economics and developing an independent research agenda.
Her advice to current Resource Economics students is brief but fitting for the long process of graduate study: "A PhD is a marathon, not a sprint."
Congratulations, Rui Wang!