Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions最新文献

Few studies on legitimation of new technologies were able to provide insights into the longitudinal changes in legitimacy outcomes and the social dynamics that underpin such outcomes. Using a novel mixed-methods approach, combining Natural Language Processing with a qualitative text analysis, and drawing on the concept of social cohesion to investigate the social relations among actors, the study offers new insights into the legitimation of cultured meat in Germany. Using 424 newspaper articles, we identify four topics in the public discourse related to cultured meat and positive average sentiment on each topic over the period 2011–2021. Furthermore, we find the actors, groups, and social relations that shape the observed legitimacy outcomes. The empirical findings are used to develop propositions about the role of social cohesion in legitimacy creation. The study paves the way for future studies on social cohesion dynamics in socio-technical change.

Existing transitions literature often highlights successful experiments for changing practices through multi-actor processes but overlooks the challenges of adjusting incumbent practices and engaging actors in reflexive learning. The current article addresses this gap through two qualitative case studies of water-related co-creation processes in the Netherlands. Each case met inertia and resistance from various actors in different forms. We examine the difficulties encountered using data from semi-structured interviews and observations of micro-level interactions from embedded action research. We find that using transactional learning perspective combined with Practical Epistemology Analysis is useful for obtaining a worm-eye view of dynamics of incumbency on the actor-level, in contrast to the eagle-eye view commonly adopted in transitions studies. Our main contribution is the identification of specific barriers to change and demonstrating how a worm-eye perspective offers detailed insights into micro-level interactions that hinder sustainability transitions.

Considering that recycling is seldom economically viable, this study analyzes how recycling organizations perceive institutional voids and adapt their business models to propel a transition from waste crisis to establishing waste management services. The analysis is embedded in the sustainability transitions literature and is approached from an institutional void and business model lens. Qualitative research was conducted with 23 organizations in the recycling industry of Lebanon. The main findings revealed that public voids mainly cause constraints with few exceptions of opportunities, whereas some market voids are perceived as constraints at times and opportunities at others, and coping with these voids leads to a convergence of business models. This study contributes to business model adaptation by examining its role in the transition process and to sustainability transitions research by focusing on how niche-level actors introduce waste management services that are otherwise the regime's responsibility.

Local governments are placing greater requirements on households to sort and reduce their waste. The research draws on experimental governance scholarship to explore the transformative capacity of local government in low waste sustainability transitions and how this is given form through engaging households in new waste management initiatives. Australia, a high-income county with one of the highest per-capita rates of waste generation globally, faces significant challenges for low waste city transitions. We conducted a desktop review of local government waste initiatives across Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, and recorded interviews with nine waste managers. While the traditional service provider role remains important, municipalities are introducing new ways of addressing the waste problem that rely on actions by other parties, including households. Roles of promoter, enabler and partner are employed to experiment with new initiatives. The promoter role is an important initial stage, but the enabler and partner roles have most potential to orchestrate households as active innovation and change agents in low waste transitions and contribute to broader shifts in social norms and practices.

As Longyearbyen, Svalbard, embarks on a transition away from the century-long reliance on coal as the backbone of the Arctic community, existing understandings of place are destabilised. However, as an important Norwegian outpost in an increasingly tense Arctic geopolitical landscape, the phase-out transcends local visions for Longyearbyen and its new energy system. Drawing upon a mix of semi-structured interviews, fieldwork, and desk research, this paper examines the interconnected imagined socio-spatial and sociotechnical futures through the concept of place-framing. Identifying key actors, conflicts, and place-frames, three place-frames emerged: i) the environmental, ii) the techno-economic, and iii) the social, highlighting respectively the nature, renewable technology research, development, and innovation, and the social community as potential core anchors for the future Longyearbyen after coal. The paper underlines a need to attend more closely to the multi-scalarity of such processes to better understand the what's, how's, where's, and who's of imagined futures following phase-outs.

Authors dealing with the geography of sustainability transitions argue for increasing understanding of how innovations emerge and develop on multiple scales. In this article, memory studies is adopted to research the development of technology in the energy transition to gas and electricity within, across and beyond the Dutch household.

This article examines the monthly magazine of the Dutch Association for Housewives (NVvH). It shows that the NVvH contributed to technological innovations by memorizing technological development in historical narratives that encouraged housewives to engage in social relations within, across and beyond the household. Through historical narratives, the NVvH argued for extension of the material tasks of housewives to moral tasks nurturing husband and children. Through the narratives, it propagated the unification of housewives in a community to adapt to technological complexity. And through the narratives, it imagined alternative futures by encouraging housewives to engage in social relations with producers and policy-makers.

Current food transition studies predominantly examine the role of food actors in challenging dominant food regimes. However, there is a notable gap in understanding changes within the spaces where individuals interact with the food system—the food environment. In this paper, we seek to support the development of a new research agenda that engages assemblage thinking with the practicalities of transformation processes. Based on a critical review of existing literature, our assemblage-based approach embraces the chaotic, non-linear nature of transitions, steering away from narrow, rigid theories of change. An emphasis on the under-utilised concept of "lines of flight" is particularly useful to unveil the diverse, relational and dynamic nature of food environments, identifying opportunities for challenging, reimagining and, ultimately, transforming them.

While literature on transition intermediation is burgeoning, the implications of a sensitivity to “place” in transition intermediation remain ill understood. In this paper, we empirically explore the dynamics of “place-based transition intermediation”, through a case study of the ‘Dune farmers’ in the Netherlands. The farmers initiated a collaboration that serves as a bottom-up, non-state intermediary organization. The case shows the opportunities and intricacies of transition governance through place-based intermediation. We articulate six functions of intermediaries used in such place-sensitive transition governance: (1) Empowerment through cultivating local identity; (2) Constructing place-based relational capital; (3) Developing regional innovative capacity in a place-based innovation system; (4) Stimulating place-based learning; (5) Concretizing transition governance; and (6) Representing place-based networks. We conclude that place-based intermediation deserves attention, both in research and policy, to improve transition governance and help accelerate place-sensitive transition processes towards sustainable futures.

This study focuses on citizen participation as a co-productive and knowledge-intensive process in innovation policies concerned with regionally anchoring grand challenges. We apply a process-tracing approach and analyse citizen participation in two regional challenge-based innovation policies in the Ruhr, Germany. Local sensemaking, problem ownership, iterations and knowledge co-production are discussed as key mechanisms in the anchoring process. The results reveal the importance of a collective dimension in interpreting the local problem setting of a challenge achieved by reaching out to numerous citizens and how local, corrective and actionable knowledge facilitate the regional challenge anchoring. The policy formulation phase required the highest level of knowledge co-produced with citizens, followed by the implementation phase.

Micro-missions represent small-scale, place-based strategies for societal innovation, distinct from grand missions that target national-level transformations. They offer potential for collaborative engagement among local stakeholders in the public sector, businesses, and civil society that aims to address local needs and promote wider innovation, particularly for social and ecological progress. Despite the potential for place-based micro-missions to provide a more focused approach to tackling societal challenges, the practicalities of delivering such a strategy remain uncertain. Through an exploration of a Welsh (UK) public food micro-mission, we identify the evolving tensions and conflicts and their impact on such micro-missions and their outcomes. Our findings underscore the potential significance of tensions throughout the micro-mission process. They highlight the crucial role of regional actors in generating creative responses to tensions through proactive governance, distributed leadership, and place-based experimentation.