Stakeholder engagement does not guarantee impact: A co-productionist perspective on model-based drought research
Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2024

Stakeholder engagement has become a watchword for environmental scientists to assert the societal relevance of their projects to funding agencies. In water research based on computer simulation modelling, stakeholder engagement has attracted interest as a means to overcome low uptake of new tools for water management. An increasingly accepted view is that more and better stakeholder involvement in research projects will lead to increased adoption of the modelling tools created by scientists in water management. However, we cast doubt on this view by drawing attention to how the freedom of stakeholder organizations to adopt new scientific modelling tools in their regular practices is circumscribed by the societal context. We use a modified concept of co-production in an analysis of a case of scientific research on drought in the UK to show how relationships between actors in the drought governance space influence the uptake of scientific modelling tools. The analysis suggests an explanation of why stakeholder engagement with one scientific project led to one output (data) getting adopted by stakeholders while another output (modelling tools) attracted no discernible interest. Our main objective is to improve the understanding of the limitations to stakeholder engagement as a means of increasing societal uptake of scientific research outputs.

drought governance space

data

computer modelling

water management

stakeholder engagement

Författare

Catharina Landström

Chalmers, Teknikens ekonomi och organisation, Science, Technology and Society

Eric Sarmiento

Texas State University

Sarah J. Whatmore

University of Oxford

Social Studies of Science

0306-3127 (ISSN) 14603659 (eISSN)

Vol. 54 2 210-230

Ämneskategorier

Byggproduktion

DOI

10.1177/03063127231199220

PubMed

37753924

Mer information

Senast uppdaterat

2024-04-04