Search results

This study aims to investigate how living lab (LL) activities align with responsible research and innovation (RRI) principles, particularly in artificial intelligence (AI)-driven digital transformation (DT) processes. The study seeks to define a framework termed “responsible living lab” (RLL), emphasizing transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethics and sustainability. This emerging issue paper also proposes several directions for future researchers in the field.

The research methodology involved a literature review complemented by insights from a workshop on defining RLLs. The literature review followed a concept-centric approach, searching key journals and conferences, yielding 32 relevant articles. Backward and forward citation analysis added 19 more articles. The workshop, conducted in the context of UrbanTestbeds.JR and SynAir-G projects, used a reverse brainstorming approach to explore potential ethical and responsible issues in LL activities. In total, 13 experts engaged in collaborative discussions, highlighting insights into AI’s role in promoting RRI within LL activities. The workshop facilitated knowledge sharing and a deeper understanding of RLL, particularly in the context of DT and AI.

This emerging issue paper highlights ethical considerations in LL activities, emphasizing user voluntariness, user interests and unintended participation. AI in DT introduces challenges like bias, transparency and digital divide, necessitating responsible practices. Workshop insights underscore challenges: AI bias, data privacy and transparency; opportunities: inclusive decision-making and efficient innovation. The synthesis defines RLLs as frameworks ensuring transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethical considerations and sustainability in AI-driven DT within LLs. RLLs aim to align DT with ethical values, fostering inclusivity, responsible resource use and human rights protection.

The proposed definition of RLL introduces a framework prioritizing transparency, stakeholder engagement, ethics and sustainability in LL activities, particularly those involving AI for DT. This definition aligns LL practices with RRI, addressing ethical implications of AI. The value of RLL lies in promoting inclusive and sustainable innovation, prioritizing stakeholder needs, fostering collaboration and ensuring environmental and social responsibility throughout LL activities. This concept serves as a foundational step toward a more responsible and sustainable LL approach in the era of AI-driven technologies.

This paper aims to look at the implementation of project-funded research governance and its potential to induce organisational learning on responsible research and innovation (RRI). This paper analysed what types of organisational learning and change can take place within organisations of an Europe-funded project and to what extent. This paper examined whether and how change occurs and how it is shaped and co-produced with other orderings.

The paper is based on materials and evidence collected while working on the internal evaluation of a Horizon 2020-funded project. Analysis of the results of the mixed methods evaluation design was used to characterise occurrences of organisational learning and change.

The authors identified different forms of learning (single-loop learning, double-loop learning, reflexive and reflective learning and situational learning). The extent of learning that could lead to long-lasting organisational change was limited. This was due to the project-based and organisational design, the key-based definition of RRI and the indeterminacy of what constitutes learning and change – both at the level of funding and performing the project. For organisational change to occur, the authors argue for governance mechanisms based on reflexive learning that consider a range of structural conditions and measures.

Organisational learning plays an important role in change processes, which has so far been given too little consideration concerning the governance and implementation of RRI through project-based funding. The authors argue for a restructuring of governance and funding mechanisms to create more space for reflexivity and learning.

The promotion of autonomous vehicles introduces privacy and security risks, underscoring the pressing need for responsible innovation implementation. To more effectively address the societal risks posed by autonomous vehicles, considering collaborative engagement of key stakeholders is essential. This study aims to provide insights into the governance of potential privacy and security issues in the innovation of autonomous driving technology by analyzing the micro-level decision-making processes of various stakeholders.

For this study, the authors use a nuanced approach, integrating key stakeholder theory, perceived value theory and prospect theory. The study constructs a model based on evolutionary game for the privacy and security governance mechanism of autonomous vehicles, involving enterprises, governments and consumers.

The governance of privacy and security in autonomous driving technology is influenced by key stakeholders’ decision-making behaviors and pivotal factors such as perceived value factors. The study finds that the governmental is influenced to a lesser extent by the decisions of other stakeholders, and factors such as risk preference coefficient, which contribute to perceived value, have a more significant influence than appearance factors like participation costs.

This study lacks an investigation into the risk sensitivity of various stakeholders in different scenarios.

The study delineates the roles and behaviors of key stakeholders and contributes valuable insights toward addressing pertinent risk concerns within the governance of autonomous vehicles. Through the study, the practical application of Responsible Innovation theory has been enriched, addressing the shortcomings in the analysis of micro-level processes within the framework of evolutionary game.

With the growth and profound influence of technology on our life, it is important to address the ethical issues inherent to the development and deployment of technology. Researchers and practitioners submit the need to inspect: how technology and ethics interact, how ethical principles regulate technology and what could be the probable future course of action to execute techno-ethical practices in a socio-technical discourse effectively. To address the thoughts related to techno-ethics, the authors of the present study conducted exploratory research to understand the trend and relevance of technology ethics since its inception.

The study collected over 679 documents for the period 1990–2022 from the Scopus database. A quantitative approach of bibliometric analysis was conducted to study the pattern of authorship, publications, citations, prominent journals and contributors in the subject area. VOS viewer software was utilized to visualize and map academic performance in techno-ethics.

The findings revealed that the concept of techno-ethics is an emerging field and requires more investigation to harness its relevance with everchanging technology development. The data revealed substantial growth in the field of techno-ethics in humanities, social science and management domain in the last two decades. Also, most of the prominent cited references and documents in the database tend to cover the theme of Artificial Intelligence, Big data, computer ethics, morality, decision-making, IT ethics, human rights, responsibility and privacy.

The article provides a comprehensive overview of scientific production and main research trends in techno-ethics until 2022. The study is a pioneer in expanding the academic productivity and performance of embedding ethics in technology.

The purpose of this paper is to provide answers regarding the factors that motivate or discourage the quadruple helix (QH) stakeholders and the wider public in citizen science (CS) activities. The research reveals a current overview of the perceptions, attitudes, concerns and motivation with regard to development of CS ecosystem in four countries: Greece, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Spain.

The researchers deploy a mixed methodology, entailing an in-depth literature review and a large-scale quantitative survey (approximately 2,000 citizens) targeting QH stakeholders and general public from the local national ecosystems. The results contain both descriptive statistics and statistical analysis per country. After the comprehensive overview of drivers and barriers regarding the participation in CS activities in general, the focus is narrowed down on the engagement motivation of different QH stakeholders and the differences in enabling/hindering factors at the local ecosystems.

Depending on the country and the pre-existing level of CS maturity, the results provide a complicated network of factors that unlock or block participation in CS activities. These factors include, to name a few, political maturity, civic engagement, technological infrastructures, economic growth, culture of stakeholder collaboration, psychological stimulus and surplus of resources. The implications of the findings necessitate the alignment of the envisioned CS ecosystem with the local dynamics in each country.

The quantitative nature of the survey method, limited sample size and only four countries context are noted as limitations of the study and offer future research potential for longitudinal settings and mixed-methods studies.

The results contribute to the wider literature on CS that focuses on perspectives, possibilities and differences in local contexts with respect to the public engagement by developing CS ecosystem. At the same time, its added value lies in the overall practical proposition, and how the latter can effectively and efficiently attract and retain different stakeholder groups and citizens, under a collaborative approach.

This study aims to identify in literature the role of construction stakeholders in the implementation of circular economy (CE) in the construction industry (CI). This study also sought to identify the status quo and research trend, “hot themes”, areas requiring more research and future research direction of stakeholders’ role in CE implementation in the CI.

A literature search was conducted using the Scopus search engine, augmented by Google Scholar to produce 50 relevant articles for the identification of stakeholders’ roles using content analysis. The scientometric study was undertaken using VOSviewer on 42 articles obtained from Scopus search to identify the status quo, “hot themes”, knowledge gaps and future research direction of the role of stakeholders in CE implementation.

Through content analysis, the identified roles of government as a stakeholder are to develop efficient policy instruments, legislation support and financial investment in research and development activities that will promote the smooth implementation of CE. The role of academia/research is to engage in research aimed at investigating both the short-term behaviour and the durability of recycled materials and products. In addition, the roles of professionals in the consultant/design/procurement team are to design with life cycle assessment and reused materials, design for deconstruction and disassembly, etc. The role of the user/consumer is to ensure knowledge diffusion and awareness exchange that recognize the available opportunities for long-term material usage (including repair, reuse, refurbishment and recycling). The research status quo identified from the scientometric analysis include how stakeholders can come up with innovative ways in demolition that will ensure that more of the materials can be reused. Stakeholders should focus on enacting policies and laws that can promote the use of recycled materials in buildings, etc. Research that focuses on how to engage the various construction stakeholders to come up with specific public policy that will promote CE implementation, identifying the specific roles to be played by stakeholders during policy enactment as well as managing the environment, laws and legislations towards CE implementation. The role of stakeholders in the extension of the life span of projects, the use of strategies to minimize waste generation and standardization of building materials, components and connectors with the purpose of simplifying disassembly are the research gaps and areas for future research studies. Some of the research “hot themes” include “circular business models in the CI”, “environmental sustainability policy implementation”, “environmental, economic and social sustainability”, “policy, laws and legislations on waste management” and “environmental and industrial economics” towards CE implementation.

The findings from this study serve as a valuable reference for construction stakeholders to assess their specific roles as stakeholders and to identify the status quo and research trend, “hot themes”, areas requiring more research and future research directions on stakeholders’ roles in CE implementation in the CI.

Identifying the role of stakeholders for CE implementation is one bold step towards the achievement of CE implementation in the CI.

This paper aims to analyse how local agri-food systems (LAFS), compared to other production models, can offer innovative responses to the important environmental challenges facing food production under the twin transition. These responses are more conducive to community inclusion and local development.

The paper combines territorial development, clusters and industrial districts literature with studies on agri-food industry environmental problems and twin transition technologies to develop an agri-food systems typology. This typology is based on a territorial approach to environmental challenges of food production and serves to illustrate the ways in which LAFS can provide innovative responses to these challenges.

The study allows to visualise the differences between LAFS and other agri-food production models, showing how the operationalisation and implementation of digitisation occur at territorial level and how rural communities are involved in the process. The theoretical proposal emphasises not assuming that technology is inherently beneficial but ensuring that its implementation is inclusive and generates social value for the communities.

The paper aims to enrich future research by adopting a territorial perspective to study the twin transition challenges associated with food production systems.

This study explores digital transformation in the tea supply chain within developing economies, with a focus on smallholder tea producers in Sri Lanka. Tea is one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. Among the tea producers, smallholder tea producers account for a substantial portion of total tea production in several countries. Mobile phones play a significant role in providing smallholder producers with access to crucial agricultural information, markets and financial services.

This study adopts a deductive approach, analysing mobile phone ownership, literacy, experience and perception among smallholder tea producers. The chi-squared test of independence and hierarchical clustering methods were used to test the hypotheses and address the research questions.

The study identifies four clusters of smallholder tea producers as Basic Tech Adopters, Digital Laggards, Skeptical Feature Phone Users and Tech-savvy Adopters based on their characteristics towards mobile-based technologies. Approximately 75% of the surveyed sample, which included both tech-savvy and basic-tech adopters, showed a positive attitude toward adopting mobile-based agricultural technologies.

The study suggests developing targeted strategies and policies to enhance the productivity of the smallholder tea production process in developing economies. The study highlights the importance of awareness, access, affordability and availability when implementing digital services for businesses at the base of the pyramid, such as tea smallholdings in developing economies.

The present study aims to address the lack of data-driven empirical studies on the use of mobile phones in smallholder settings. The findings of this study enable the enhancement of entrepreneurship within the tea production supply chain, especially, within stakeholders who deliver digital transformation support services.

In the current era, the focus on circular economy (CE) has gained substantial momentum among the research communities across the manufacturing world. It has become the need of the hour to act fast due to the alarming issues of unsustainability such as climate change, global warming, waste generation, environmental pollution, resource scarceness and ecological degradations. This research aims to investigate and model the CE enablers in the product development process related to the moderating effect of net zero.

The significant CE enablers are identified through literature review and expert brainstorming. The Pythagorean fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (PF-DEMATEL) technique has been used to investigate and evaluate the significant CE enablers in product development process. PF-DEMATEL determines the inter-relationship and casual dependency among the selected CE enablers. Indian automobile small and medium enterprises (SMEs) have been considered as a case organization to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

The findings reveal that “Top management support and clear vision towards CE adoption” is the most important enabler and “Artificial intelligence in product value chain” is recognized as the least vital enabler. This research aids the managers, decision-makers, policy planners and workforce to develop and formulating efficient blueprints for the effective adoption of CE in Indian SMEs.

This is the first kind of research that explores CE enablers in product development process for Indian SMEs.

To contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, this study aims to explore how to encourage innovative green behaviors among college students and the mechanisms behind the formation of green innovation behavior. Specifically, this study examines the influences of schools, mentors and college students themselves.

A multilevel, multisource study involving 261 students from 51 groups generally supported this study’s predictions.

Proenvironmental and responsible mentors significantly predicted innovative green behavior among college students. In addition, creative motivation mediated the logical chain among green intellectual capital, emotional intelligence and green innovation behavior.

The study findings offer new insights into the conditions required for college students to engage in green innovation. In addition, they provide practical implications for cultivating green innovation among college students.

The authors proposed and tested a multilevel theory based on the ability–motivation–opportunity framework. In this model, proenvironmental and responsible mentors, green intellectual capital and emotional intelligence triggered innovative green behavior among college students through creative motivation.