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The purpose of this paper is to assess recent strategic sustainability policy, planning and assessment efforts in Victoria, Australia.

An interpretive approach to policy analysis provides the methodological foundation for the analysis. Evidence is drawn from the analysis of policy texts and semi‐structured interviews.

Sustainability attracted considerable policy attention in Victoria during the first decade of the 21st century, with stated ambitions for Victoria to become “the sustainable state” and “world leaders in environmental sustainability”. In pursuing these ambitions, Victoria's efforts centred on hosting a summit, articulating medium‐term directions and priorities, releasing a whole of government framework to advance sustainability, and establishing a Department of Sustainability and Environment, and a Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability. However, the evidence indicates these efforts would have benefited from greater public engagement and input, stronger governance arrangements, and a broader conceptualisation of sustainability.

The evidence presented highlights the implications associated with efforts to promote sustainability through strategic policy and planning processes.

This paper provides an informed, yet policy relevant, analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and possibilities associated with pursuing sustainability at the sub‐national level. It also highlights the ways in which policy objectives can be frustrated by failing to establish the solid foundations necessary for building a robust approach to promoting sustainability. The value of progressing sustainability within a strategic improvement cycle is also highlighted.

The concept of “participation” has become a buzzword in contemporary public governance models. However, despite the broad and significant interest, defining participation remains a debated topic. The aim of the current study was to explore how participants perceived and interpreted the meaning and scope of participation.

This study is part of a four-year (2019–2022) longitudinal research project investigating stakeholder participation in the context of developing and establishing a strategic regional plan in Region Skåne in southern Sweden. The research project has a qualitative approach and uses interviews with different stakeholder groups such as municipal politicians and public officials and a survey as empirical material.

The authors developed a participation spectrum including eight types of participation: to be open, to be informed, to be listened to, to discuss, to be consulted, to give and take, to collaborate and to co-create. The authors also identified four different purposes of participation: creating a joint network, creating a joint understanding, creating a joint effort and creating a joint vision. The spectrum and the purposes were related through four characteristics of participation, i.e. involvement, interaction, influence and empowerment.

The study rests on a single case, and so the results have limited transferatibility.

Researching participation in terms of the participants' perceptions contributes a new perspective to the existing literature, which has commonly focussed on the organizers' perceptions of participation. Moreover, in order to clarify what participation meant to the participants, the study puts emphasis on untangling this from the why question of participation.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a critical view of participatory policies and measures by highlighting that participation is not only a right for young people, but also an obligation for many. This obligated participation is studied conceptually and empirically.

The paper introduces a novel typology of youth participation that demonstrates the dimensions of institutional framing and a degree of choice in participation. The typology is applied in an empirical study on how the participation rights and obligations are formed and handled within an educational programme, aiming to support young people at the margins.

Young people are controlled by their participation obligations, and are guided to reach maturity and claim personal responsibility for their choices. The acceptance of an obligation to participate has to be negotiated with young people in services; otherwise they may opt out of supportive measures.

More research is needed on how youth participation terminology is used in political programmes and professional practices.

It is vital to discuss the options and obligations of young people in professional support measures and consider their implications for different groups of young people. At the policy level, the challenge is to ensure that the right to participate at community and political levels is not ignored or made inaccessible to young people at the margins.

The typology diversifies understanding of youth participation and enables the analysis of participation types. It can be applied in youth studies, policy-making and practices.

Ongoing environmental threats have intensified the need for firms to take big leaps forward to operate in a manner that is both ecologically sustainable and socially responsible. This paper aims to assess the degree to which firms are adopting citizen science as a tool to achieve sustainability and social responsibility targets.

This study applies a qualitative content analysis approach to assess the current presence of citizen science in sustainability and social responsibility reports issued by Globescan sustainability leaders and by firms ranked by the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500.

While the term itself is mostly absent from reports, firms are reporting on a range of activities that could be classified as a form of “citizen science.”

Citizen science can help firms achieve their corporate sustainability and corporate social responsibility goals and targets. Linking sustainability and social responsibility efforts to this existing framework can help triangulate corporate efforts to engage with stakeholders, collect data about the state of the environment and promote better stewardship of natural resources.

Supporting citizen science can help firms work toward meeting UN Sustainable Development Goals, which have highlighted the importance of collaborative efforts that can engage a broad range of stakeholders in the transition to more sustainable business models.

This paper is the first to examine citizen science in a corporate sustainability and social responsibility context. The findings present information to support improvements to the development of locally relevant science-based indicators; real-time monitoring of natural resources and supply chain sustainability; and participatory forums for stakeholders including suppliers, end users and the broader community.

Many countries today, especially in Europe, provide publicly funded public services in quasi-markets. As these markets commercialize, agencies of various types are providing technologies that support citizens’ choice of services. Citizens’ use of technologies for service provision is studied as e-government under labels of channel management, e-service uptake or adoption. In contrast, by using actor–network theory (ANT), the purpose of this paper is to focus on the marketing devices that are used to enroll citizens to choose technologies in a context with large penetration of quasi-market arrangements.

Based on a Swedish case study, this paper uses qualitative data from 11 occurrences of technologies to support citizens’ choice (“market devices”) in education, healthcare and public pension in an analysis of the means taken (“marketing devices”) to increase their use. The study formulates a tentative typology of these devices.

The marketing devices are intended to attract citizens’ attention to the possibility of choice (e.g. catalogs, postcards and commercials), invite interaction (e.g. various social media platforms), improve the technological support in line with user needs (e.g. user participation in development), increase visibility of technological support (e.g. search optimization) or directly connect citizens to technological support (e.g. via links).

The paper contributes to e-government research through a typology of means taken to increase citizens’ technology use based on selected concepts from ANT, and to a discussion of technologies and humans.

From collection to connection has been a buzzword in the library world for more than a decade. This catchy phrase indicates that users are seen not only as borrowers, but as active participants. The aim of this paper is to investigate and analyse three questions in relation to user participation in public libraries in a Nordic perspective. How can participation in public libraries be characterised? Why should libraries deal with user participation? What kinds of different user participation can be identified in public libraries?

The paper uses a selection of theoretical approaches and practical examples to obtain a varied understanding of user participation in public libraries. Research fields outside library and information science have developed a wide range of theoretical approaches on user participation. Examples from cultural policy, museum studies and participatory culture are selected to get a deeper understanding on participation in public libraries. The practical examples are chosen to illustrate the richness of different kinds of user participation in libraries.

There are six forms of active participation in libraries: volunteer programmes, interactive displays, workshops, co-creation, user-driven innovation and book clubs.

This paper is an overall synthesis of theoretical and practical aspects of user participation in public libraries. Furthermore, the paper challenges the deeply rooted assumption that participation in libraries takes place almost exclusively within digital contexts.

The purpose of this study is to explore the discrepancies between the services provided by municipalities through e-Government portals and the services sought by residents in the context of smart cities.

This research investigates the information and services delivered by municipalities via e-Government portals and the services that residents wish to access through these portals. A mind map representation of ideas from 707 participants is used to visually illustrate the proposed e-Government portal structure based on user recommendations.

The findings reveal that existing e-Government portals fall short in offering a comprehensive range of e-services desired by residents. The results highlight the need for municipal e-Government websites to grant residents access to a diverse array of services and information. It is crucial to note that the specific services may fluctuate over time and between cities, reflecting the evolving needs of residents and the capabilities of municipalities.

This study is original in its focus on bridging the gap between existing e-Government portals and residents’ preferences, using a mind map representation to visually illustrate the proposed portal structure based on user recommendations. The research emphasizes the importance of considering residents’ needs in terms of services and functionalities and adapting websites accordingly.

Women's travel pattern is different from those of men. Women who have both paid employment and unpaid care work have more complex travel patterns. However, land-use policies and urban mobility strategies in the Egyptian context do not consider these differences. This paper analyzes and discusses the travel patterns of the Egyptian working women with children. It examines the difference between men's and women's travel behavior in different income levels. The paper aims at determining the main factors that affect working women's travel patterns within the care economy framework and suggesting recommendations for enhancing women's travel patterns in Greater Cairo Region (GCR).

The methodology relies on conducting a quantitative and qualitative analysis using questionnaires and interviews with working women and men from different social/economic levels in two different workplaces in GCR.

The results demonstrate that income level, workplace locations, schools locations, and schools typologies greatly affect working women's travel patterns in GCR.

The study findings will help urban planners and decision-makers to improve working women's mobility to make their daily trips shorter and more accessible to achieve equitable cities through understanding the conducted affecting factors and considering the suggested recommendations.

It has been widely recognised that the participation of residents is a significant issue in contemporary urban heritage conservation. However, studies confirm that the reasons behind residents' engagement are still difficult to assess, particularly in emerging countries. This paper aims to evaluate the factors that incite or prevent residents from participating in built heritage rehabilitation in the old city of Constantine, by applying the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) model.

A questionnaire-based survey was used to collect information from the residents. The collected data were then analysed using the structural equation model (SEM).

The findings show that the most significant factors affecting residents' participation were related to their motivations and abilities. Interestingly, factors related to the opportunities did not influence participation. Thus, autonomous rehabilitation according to the residents' motivation and abilities is more likely to be adopted.

These findings are limited to the selected sample, and some variables have been eliminated through the SEM analysis.

However, as a first attempt to study residents' participation in built heritage rehabilitation in Constantine, the paper proposes a different perspective for assessing participation by considering its means and ends simultaneously. The paper also provides guidance to local decision-makers to improve the legal framework by implementing factors that encourage residents' involvement in sustainable heritage management.