Par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on and acceptance

Invol­ving citi­zens and users, and fac­to­ring their recom­men­da­ti­ons into the inno­va­ti­on pro­ces­ses for the mobi­li­ty and ener­gy tran­si­ti­on, is a key requi­re­ment for suc­cessful dif­fu­si­on of inno­va­tions in socie­ty. Based on the fin­dings from the M2G rese­arch cam­pus’ first fun­ding pha­se, the ‘Par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on and accep­tance’ work modu­le aims to fur­ther explo­re ear­ly imple­men­ta­ti­on of par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on for spe­ci­fic aspects of mobi­li­ty and ener­gy rese­arch and tech­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ment, and app­ly this accor­din­gly. Using inno­va­ti­ve par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on for­mats (e.g. ran­do­mi­sed par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on for­mats, par­ti­ci­pa­ti­ve inno­va­ti­on work­shops, tech­no­lo­gy salons) in all of M2G’s focus are­as, it will estab­lish the per­spec­ti­ves and recom­men­da­ti­ons of various tar­get audi­en­ces, and thus incor­po­ra­te the­se into the rese­arch cam­pus as a who­le. It will also exami­ne the role of par­ti­ci­pa­ti­on in app­ly­ing rese­arch fin­dings to addi­tio­nal prac­ti­cal contexts.

The rese­arch into accep­tance seeks to iden­ti­fy fac­tors and mecha­nisms having a posi­ti­ve or nega­ti­ve influence on the accep­tance of tech­no­lo­gi­cal solu­ti­ons for the ener­gy and mobi­li­ty tran­si­ti­on that have been deve­lo­ped in other work modu­les. The fol­lo­wing rese­arch ques­ti­ons are rai­sed here:

1. What does opti­mi­sed grid inte­gra­ti­on mean for the users and par­ti­ci­pa­ting busi­nesses, and what role do legal and poli­ti­cal frame­work con­di­ti­ons play here?
2. How do dri­ver­less cars and char­ging chan­ge ope­ra­tio­nal pro­ces­ses and end-user routines?
3. What chal­lenges do busi­nesses face in elec­tri­fy­ing their fleets?
4. How well accept­ed are com­pre­hen­si­ve, net­work­ed mobi­li­ty-sys­tem offe­rings in indi­vi­du­al neigh­bour­hoods and districts?
5. How do the transfer are­as pro­mo­te accep­tance of new mobi­li­ty offe­rings at a dis­trict and, in par­ti­cu­lar, city level?

The empi­ri­cal fin­dings will be gene­ra­li­sed and incor­po­ra­ted into a ‘(social) dif­fu­si­on of inno­va­tions’ theo­ry using a mix of qua­li­ta­ti­ve, quan­ti­ta­ti­ve and explo­ra­ti­ve rese­arch methods.