Targeted Forward-Looking Citizen Engagement: The Case of Sustainable Innovation

Abstract

Making the future more sustainable is arguably a challenging task if not a ‘wicked’ problem. Not only does sustainability incorporate social, environmental, economic and cultural elements, but there is also the question about on whose terms and in whose interests sustainability should be targeted. To meet these aims, we reviewed how European citizens envision desirable and sustainable futures. As data we used citizen visions from three involvement exercises in which citizens drafted a total of 298 visions. We used the methodology of topic modelling to identify how people’s agendas for sustainable futures are expressed in the visions examined. Twenty such agendas were identified and we further examined how these agendas relate to sustainable innovation, which is one of the key ways to achieve better sustainability. Three agendas are highlighted in the context of sustainable innovation and relate to use of natural resources: ‘System resources’, ‘New food markets’ and ‘Farming innovations’. ‘Developmental education’ is a lesser agenda in comparison to all-encompassing contexts. Similarly, agendas concerning ‘Collectives’, ‘People’s channel’ and ‘Science’ are more closely related to general sustainability targets than sustainable innovation. The final section of the chapter presents discussion of these results and the application of methods developed for natural language processing in identifying citizen agenda.