STP

1. Innovation for sustainability in socio-technical systems:
Much engineering research and development is concerned with improved resource use and lower environmental impact of specific technologies. Social science research aims to focus on technical and organisational change at wider scales, including transformations in agro-food, water and transport systems. Research should take into account underlying technological, regulatory and market changes, and analyse how these may influence the design and diffusion of more sustainable systems.

Social science can contribute by addressing questions such as:

How do more sustainable technological systems emerge and how do they come to influence or replace dominant systems?
How do technical, organisational and social innovations interact in these processes of transformation?
Where does purposive social shaping operate (at systemic, suite or individual technology levels)?
What place does public and political opinion play in socio-technical transitions?

2. Management and sustainable innovation:
Innovation requires the matching of new knowledge with market opportunities. Many of the economic benefits will normally flow to the innovator and to the consumer/user of the innovation. Innovation for sustainability is concerned with generating benefits that are collective and social, as well as private and appropriable. Social science can improve our understanding of how innovating organisations (firms, public sector agencies, charities) are responding to this need to consider collective benefits, and how this is influencing the management of innovation. These changes may link to debates about corporate social responsibility and corporate governance.

Critical research questions include:

3. Sustainable product/service concepts:
The final outputs of technological systems are services, functions and values. Some environmental commentators argue that many services could be provided with fewer resources and lower environmental burdens. They also point to the increasing 'service orientation' of producers (energy suppliers for instance), to the convergence and fusion of new consumer services, and to the notion of 'collective goods' as evidence of greater environmental efficiency. In principle, this is because the provider of the service has incentives to provide services at least cost (and therefore at least resource cost). However, the impacts of these changes on sustainability are poorly understood.

Possible research questions could include:

What are the technological dynamics behind reconfigured markets for products and services?
What role will new kinds of market relationships play in enabling more sustainable lifestyles?
What barriers exist to the adoption of new product/service concepts, and how can they be overcome?

4. New pervasive technologies and sustainability:
Information and communications technologies (ICTs) and biotechnologies are likely to have increasingly widespread impacts on the economy and society. For this reason they will have profound impacts on the use of natural resources and environmental services. There are opportunities for huge improvements (through dematerialisation and smarter, more adaptive technologies for instance) as well threats of major negative impacts (the potential of 'rebound' effects via the increased scope for consumption, genetically-modified organisms in the environment).

Research questions could include:

How will widely-applied technologies influence the demand for and use of resources?
How could ICTs and biotechnology be used to encourage greater resource productivity?
What new risks do they present, and how can these be managed?

AREA 2 - UNDERPINNING CONCEPTS

5. Sustainable consumption:
The question of market demand and consumer behaviour is pivotal. Nothing may be gained for the environment if widespread adoption of more sustainable technologies promotes unsustainable consumption. It is well known that many socially and environmentally beneficial technologies are not widely taken up by consumers (whether final, business or public sector consumers). Hidden costs, uncertainty and poor information are all contributory factors. Analytically, debate exists around the assumption of consumer sovereignty and choice that underlies much economic thinking in this field. Sociologists of consumption argue that it is more appropriate to think of the consumer as being 'constructed': by the creation of demand through advertising and social change; by the choices that are offered to consumers; and by levels of wealth, education, social class.

Possible research questions include:

What is the relationship between lifestyle and consumption patterns?
How are consumption behaviours influenced by environmental considerations?
In which social groups and communities do opportunities exist to change and stimulate consumption behaviours to promote sustainability?
What is the potential for public policy to promote more sustainable consumption?

6. Uncertainty, risk and trust:
Decision-making about sustainable technologies will involve risk, uncertainty and surprise about likely economic implications, and about possible social and environmental impacts. Although there is a strong tradition of work on science and society, the role these factors play in the governance of technologies that are seen as sustainable remains under-researched.

Research questions would include:

How should the commercial and other risks of new sustainable technologies be distributed?
How can diversity and flexibility be retained in broad shifts to more sustainable technologies?
What role do foresight and precaution play in informing policy and decision making?
How can legitimacy and trust be generated around purposive technological changes with society-wide impacts?

7. Policy instruments and frameworks:
There is wide recognition that the evidence base for policy decisions about innovating for sustainability is poor. Although a range of instruments have been proposed: long-range targets; financial support mechanisms; public procurement; producer responsibility; innovation networks; modernisation and transformation of infrastructures, little is known about their effectiveness in influencing resource productivity. Even less is known about how policy portfolios interact and lead to responses in the market. Many policy packages (such as the climate change levy) do not appear to be fully integrated and are likely to lead to perverse incentives.

Possible research questions include:

What evidence exists in the UK or internationally on the effectiveness of different policy instruments for promoting the uptake of sustainable technologies?
How far are existing instruments mutually consistent or contradictory?
How far is international coordination a prerequisite for effective action?

8. Developing criteria and tools for industrial sustainability:
Action to promote sustainable technologies requires increasingly sophisticated tools and decision-making frameworks. Techniques for measuring, monitoring and analysing sustainability performance are required at multiple scales (specific technologies, technological systems, companies, sectors, households, communities, regions, countries). Their development requires an interdisciplinary approach and intensive interaction with users. There is also a demand for techniques for visioning and making strategy about more sustainable socio-technical systems.

Key questions include:

What are the needs of different users for metrics and ways of visioning the future?
Who uses sustainability indicators?
How do they influence/frame decision-making processes?
What is the link between appreciative and qualitative approaches and more formal, quantitative approaches?