Conceptualisation of Campus Living Labs for the sustainability transition: An integrative literature review

Abstract

Higher education institutions (HEI) have the potential to catalyse the sustainability transition, but effective collaboration among their various units and faculties is essential. Living labs have emerged to address this gap, yet a unified terminology and concept for this phenomenon remains lacking. This research aims to clarify and establish a unified terminology and definition for living labs within the university context for the sustainability transition, i.e. “Campus Living Lab” (CLL). An integrative literature review was conducted first to develop a Living Lab Categorization Framework to classify living labs in a specific domain and second to apply it to case studies of university-based living labs focused on sustainability transitions. The study introduces the term “campusian” to describe the users or citizens in a CLL. CLLs are conceptualised as systems for innovation and learning where real-life experimental and research activities are co-produced by students, researchers, teachers, and operational staff to integrate sustainability in the different processes within higher education institutions, prioritising the needs and preferences of the “campusian”. Additionally, the research presents the Campus Living Lab Model with four distinct modes: Educational, Test-bed, Strategic, and Grassroots, each uniquely contributing to the campus's sustainability goals. These findings offer a shared understanding and framework for implementing and analysing CLLs to catalyse sustainability transition from within universities.