Assessing the quality of collaboration in transdisciplinary sustainability research: Farmers’ enthusiasm to work together for the reduction of post-harvest dairy losses in Kenya

Abstract

Transdisciplinary sustainability research (TDR) is characterised by methodologies that support a rich and direct interaction between academics and other societal stakeholders. However, it is not to be taken for granted that societal stakeholders are interested in collaboration, or that researchers have the skills to put participative methods into action. While there are several frameworks available to evaluate transdisciplinary research, the quality of participants’ engagement is often neglected during evaluations. The aim of this paper is to empirically assess the intrinsic motivation of participating societal stakeholders to engage in TDR by pairing Self-Determination Theory with Poggi’s conceptual analysis of enthusiasm. We argue that the quality of collaboration between academic and other societal stakeholders is reflected by the latter’s enthusiasm to participate, and that this supports the co-creation of outputs that societal stakeholders can put into practice. Two smallholder dairy farmer groups in Nakuru County, Kenya, reflected on their engagement in a collaborative learning process (CLP) that started in 2013. The goal of the collaboration was to co-develop contextualized innovations. We found that giving more voice and increasing representation and power of farmers in the research process sparked their enthusiasm, while a sense of progress and success sustained it. The strengthened sense of autonomy, competence and relatedness associated with intrinsic motivation helped participants invest in co-creating research outputs that have direct effects on their production systems. Especially for agricultural research for development spanning between Global North and Global South contexts, sensitivity to encouraging participants’ intrinsic motivation can contribute towards decolonizing research methodologies and shifting more power towards the societal stakeholders that these projects are meant to serve. We conclude that assessing participants’ intrinsic motivation and enthusiasm helps to determine the quality of collaboration. A possible implication could also be the differentiation between methodological approaches employed in TDR that deeply engage societal stakeholders for knowledge integration and co-production, and those that do so only at a superficial level.