Dr. Stathopoulos' research brings attention to the importance of 'human' aspects of sustainable mobility systems—understanding the lifestyles, values and attitudes of decision makers and how they can change to align with sustanaility goals. Her research methods include discrete choice modeling, statistical analyisis, factor analysis, qualitative data collection and focus groups, as well as large scale surveys and operational data. She develops new methodologies to collect data and specify mathematical models of behavior that can account for factors that are not dealt with in economic choice models (such as social determinants, environmental concern, user experiences/engagement, simplified decision rules).

These richer layers of user motivations are essental for better understanding and prediction of travel behavior.  For a range of current transportation challenges such as promoting transit ridership growth, moving towards alternative fuel/automated veicles, or getting companies to adopt better practices in delivering goods, there is increasing recognition of the need to build adequate tools to account for decision complexity on the user side to match with effective decision support.