Erin Krupka is the Associate Dean for Faculty at the University of Michigan School of Information and a Professor of Information. Krupka, who joined the faculty at UMSI in 2009, has served as director of the doctoral program from 2019 to 2023 and in July 2023 was a appointed the Associate Dean for Faculty. Before joining the School of Information as an assistant professor, she graduated from Carnegie Mellon University and joined IZA (a Labor Economics Research Institute) in Bonn, Germany, as a post-doc.
An experimental behavioral economist, Krupka’s research focuses on motivating individuals to engage in behaviors that benefit organizations and communities, as well as bringing about shifts in values and culture within these contexts.
Though firmly grounded in economics, one of the hallmarks of her research agenda is the synthesis of theory and findings stemming from multiple disciplines within the social sciences. She explores how social norms and collective values emerge, the forces determining their content, their transmission and maintenance. Their study generates tremendous practical value for a range of questions from how to design social media applications that encourage desirable norms to emerge endogenously; how to harness norms in organizational settings as possible solutions to principle-agent problems; how to transition from undesirable to desirable norms of conduct and how to sustain desirable norms once they are in place.
To do so she bridges disciplines (notably, economics and psychology) and generates new methods for studying social norms and collective values. Her research on social norms suggests why individuals might engage in behaviors that appear inconsistent with self-interest and suggests why trivial modifications to a decision context can change behavior significantly. The work contributes to the emerging literature that models the sway of non-wealth factors on choice, by using social norms to raise the “psychological cost” of selfishness. It also has broader impacts that stem from its application to unpacking the social determinants of online media designers’ and end-users’ privacy decisions, establishing and fostering ethical norms and behavior in the workplace, to the implications for mechanism design of using voluntary monitoring or social feedback, and working with industry partners to increase ‘green’ behavior among consumers.
This work is directly relevant to the incentive-centered design of information systems, an approach pioneered by faculty at the School of Information. It has appeared in journals that speak to multiple audiences; most notably to audiences in economics, business and management as well as in computer science and information schools.
During her time at UMSI, Krupka has secured funding from prestigious institutions such as the National Science Foundation, the Donaghue Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Krupka teaches in the areas of behavioral economics, organizational management and choice architecture. She has been honored with the UMSI’s Teaching Award and the Honored Instructor Award from the University of Michigan Housing. She has also been nominated twice for the University of Michigan’s Golden Apple Teaching Award. She is also a proud CeMENT Metnor for Faculty in Doctoral Programs and the Director of Mentoring (2024-2026+) for the Economic Science Association.
