Artem Korzhenevych

Real-world laboratories (RwLs) have emerged as a scientifically grounded, sustainability-oriented, transdisciplinary approach to support transformative change through the co-production of knowledge via engagement and experimentation. While originally rooted in urban settings, real-world laboratories have increasingly been developed in rural and marine areas. Urban, rural, and marine areas have unique contextual characteristics that remain insufficiently addressed in both research and practice. This paper offers a first comparative view on real-world laboratories in urban, rural, and marine settings by using four different epistemological and ontological perspectives in spatial science: bio-physical, social-constructivist, geographic, and social-materialistic. We highlight key differences and investigate the implications of identified differences for transformative governance.

The Paris Agreement establishes a bottom‐up global action plan with the aim of limiting global warming to well below 2°C above preindustrial levels, where countries should pledge Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of the highest possible ambition. The design of the agreement gives national authorities the freedom to decide on their own commitments and contains a dynamic component, the ratchet‐up mechanism (RM), mandating periodic increase of the NDCs. Our survey of the UNFCCC CoP24 delegates investigates to what extent policymakers support the RM's effectiveness in achieving the climate targets of the Paris Agreement and examines the individual and country characteristics that influence their opinions. Although previous laboratory experiments highlighted limitations in the effectiveness of the RM, our findings indicate that actual climate delegates express support for the RM as a tool to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. In particular, support is significant among delegates from low‐income countries, delegates with stronger climate risk perceptions, individuals who view the Internationally Transferred Mitigation Outcomes (ITMOs) as cost‐effective instruments, those exhibiting greater technological optimism, as well as delegates who perceive less influence from industrial manufacturing interests. Our results complement laboratory studies by identifying real‐world factors that may enhance international climate cooperation.

This paper aims to advance the study of capacities for sustainability transformation in non-core regions, an area that currently remains underexplored. Employing a semi-systematic review of recent literature, the paper in particular examines how spatial perspectives from sustainability transitions research, economic geography, social and solidarity economy studies, and sociological approaches to regional change extend the transformative capacity framework. It then scrutinizes findings related to transformative capacity in non-core regions. Key insights from recent literature include a deeper understanding of the roles of public sector actors, social enterprises, and higher education institutions as agents of change, as well as an emphasis on socially just governance and subjective agency. The review also highlights critical collective processes such as transdisciplinary co-creation, mobilization of extra-regional resources, and the unlearning of outdated narratives. A research agenda to further study transformative capacity of non-core regions is proposed, prioritizing the study of cross-regional linkages for capacity development, the roles of social enterprises in fostering innovation, and strategies for reframing such regions as active contributors to sustainability transformation. Future research should prioritize empirical testing of the transformative capacity framework in a broad range of contexts to refine its applicability and improve its relevance globally.

Amid escalating global crises and growing demands for sustainability transitions, innovation systems (IS) research has undergone a “normative turn,” shifting the focus of research toward addressing complex societal challenges. This paper compares three approaches that have emerged in response to this shift: Dedicated Innovation Systems (DIS), Mission‐Oriented Innovation Systems (MIS), and Challenge‐Oriented Regional Innovation Systems (CORIS). We argue that comparing these perspectives can foster a more coherent and actionable understanding of how IS can contribute to the necessary transformations at multiple scales and reduce conceptual fragmentation. Through a collaborative, reflexive methodology including expert workshops and literature analysis, we explore the background and motivation, system description, system outcomes, system processes, and system governance regimes discussed in each perspective. Our comparative framework highlights important overlaps and differences and identifies opportunities for cross‐fertilization and further research. In summary, our comparison contributes to ongoing debates about the normative dimension and the directionality of IS at the intersection of science, technology, and innovation policy, sustainability transitions, and transformations research.

Reports of successful sustainability-oriented real-world experiments can be categorized by the type of explanatory approaches employed, namely, the variance approach, which looks for correlations, and the process approach, which draws causal inferences in a narrative way. Their validity could benefit from a more critical reflection on the data and methods used. This paper examines a sample of 20 sustainability-oriented real-world experiment reports from 2006 to 2020, with the aim of uncovering the logic and methods used to demonstrate their success, that means, to show that they achieved their stated objectives. Following a distinction often made in the social sciences, I look for features of either the variance or the process approach to causal inference. I find that reports of transition experiments, socio-technical experiments, and community-based interventions display characteristic features of the process approach. Reports of trials, pilots, and field experiments, on the other hand, mostly use the variance approach to demonstrate success. An important observation is the limited recognition of possible biases related to the methods used or the data. I describe a number of possible biases that may be of importance in the context of sustainability-oriented real-world experiments. Important examples include measurement errors and biases in participant selection. Recognising the biases and correcting them where necessary can strengthen the validity of the findings obtained and help other researchers in designing their experiments.

Recreational fisheries catches are increasingly considered in the assessment and management of mixed recreational‐commercial marine fisheries, while the contribution of recreational fisheries to the economy is often overlooked. Using a telephone diary survey targeting marine recreational anglers in Germany, we estimated the number of anglers and their expenditures over the course of 1 year (2014–2015). About 197,000 marine anglers spent €248 million in Germany. We then constructed regional input–output models and contrasted the economic impacts of resident and nonresident anglers fishing in coastal and transitional brackish waters of the state of Mecklenburg‐Western Pomerania in north‐eastern Germany. On a regional scale, the total economic impact was €210 million supporting 2044 jobs, nonresident anglers were responsible for eight times greater economic impact than resident anglers. Maintaining attractive fishing opportunities for the recreational fishing sector, specifically angling tourism, is critical for maintaining resource flows to local and regional economies.

Renewable energy minigrids hold significant prospects for Africa’s energy sector and its economic development in general. The government of Ghana has established pilot renewable minigrids in five off-grid communities as a testing ground for the electrification of over 600 existing rural communities that cannot be electrified via the national grid. Although there is evidence on willingness to pay (WTP) values for renewable-generated electricity in some developing countries, little is known about households’ WTP for renewable-based electricity in Ghana and, in particular, about renewable minigrids for rural electrification. This paper provides one of the first WTP estimates for renewable-based electricity for rural electrification in a developing economy context such as Ghana. Using data from a contingent valuation survey undertaken in all five pilot renewable minigrid project communities, we found that rural households are willing to pay an average of 30 GHC/month (≈5 USD/month) for high-quality renewable-powered electricity services, which is twice the amount they are currently paying based on the Uniform National Tariffs. The hypothetical bias is addressed by conducting a survey among active users of the minigrids. The starting point bias is reduced by employing random starting bids. The respondents are willing to pay between 9 and 11% of their discretionary incomes to cover the cost of accessing reliable renewable-powered electricity in the rural, off-grid communities in Ghana. The paper concludes by discussing the policy implications of these findings regarding the development of tariff regulations and business models for renewable minigrids in the rural, off-grid sector.