Purpose – This study aims to increase our understanding of the value and ethical conflicts faced by sustainable consumption app (SCA) creators when applying gamification to support individual sustainability practices. The results include practical strategies and recommendations toward responsible innovation and sustainable human–computer interaction. Design/methodology/approach – This study consists of semi-structured interviews with 21 SCA creators, an online survey on moral foundations and thematic mapping. Findings – The apps’ content, expected impact, managerial issues and external aspects influencing their survival emerged as the four areas across which resources, the creators’ intentions, growth and trust-building strategies and gamification as a value destroyer and source of ethical tensions represent the main conflict areas. These tensions comprise engagement vs individual agency loss; third-party involvement and partnerships; rewards vs oversimplification; mandatory use vs personal drive; current knowledge vs further education; learning from others; stakeholders’ risks; experience vs unwanted outcomes and the meaning of value and collaborative design. The strategies to address these represent responsible innovation practices and are this study’s main contribution. Research limitations/implications – Including insights from non-European SCA creators and users could help identify additional opportunities for SCAs to meet their objectives. Originality/value – While studies on SCAs from the user perspective are abundant, this study takes the creators’ perspective to understand the dilemmas behind such tools. Focusing on ethical concerns and the value of gamification as a strategy to achieve the apps’ objectives offers a unique perspective for improving some of the most popular tools that enable sustainable consumption.

In this study participatory backcasting was refined to combine the use of existing visions in combination with stakeholder engagement and road-mapping and applied to the regional energy transition in Indonesia’s South Kalimantan Province, where the gross regional domestic product strongly depends on coal mining. Based on document analysis, interviews, consultations, and a focus group discussion, we determined necessary changes, driving factors and challenges, and co-created a roadmap towards the preferred Net Zero Emission vision. The roadmap proposes: (1) to increase the capacity of renewable energy, particularly wind and solar, along with battery energy storage systems; (2) to transform economic activities currently based on coal towards bioenergy hubs and to build a regional economy based on renewable energy; (3) to enhance the quality of data on renewable energy potential, power grid flexibility, and variable renewable plants, and (4) to shift culture and behaviour towards energy saving, energy communities, electrification of lifestyles, and the use of renewable energy in industry. Our study contributes to the literature on participatory backcasting by a case on the clean energy transition in fossil fuelrich nations in the Global South and advances backcasting by using existing visions instead of generating one or several new visions.

Despite the need for methodologies that support early-phase decision-making in the transition to a circular economy, current sustainability assessments often lack a prospective method that dynamically accounts for consumer decision-making based on empirical evidence. This study addresses this need by evaluating the circularity and environmental impacts of circular business models over a 30-year period, using an empirically grounded agent-based model coupled with life cycle assessment and material flow analysis. We developed a methodology to parameterize agents’ decision-making using data from demographically representative surveys and to prospectively assess the sustainability impacts of circular strategies. The case study examines the reuse, refurbishment, and subscription models of refrigerators and laptops in Japan. Results from Morris Elementary effects method and scenario analyses revealed that manufacturer-led refurbishment could reduce emissions of the whole society by 10%–12% and extend product lifetimes by 30%–33%. In contrast, the subscription model shows minimal benefits, with improvements of only 0%–3%, primarily due to consumer preferences for new products. Our consequential approach extends beyond technical strategies to evaluate the effectiveness of strategies targeting consumer behavior, including pricing, advertisements, and improvements in repair and collection services. The findings highlight the need for combining synergistic circular and diffusion strategies and suggest the need for a reorientation of policy efforts from end-of-life material recovery to refurbishment, reuse, and repair, supported by intensive campaigns and substantial price reductions in circular offerings. The methodology presented here facilitates prospective, dynamic, and consequential assessments of circular economy strategies to enhance consumer acceptance and ensure sustainability gains.

Hydrogen is considered a promising energy carrier that can potentially contribute to low-carbon energy systems and achieving climate goals. Its introduction, however, is complex, involving multiple emerging niches and developments across various sociotechnical systems. Despite its significance, the multi-system nature of hydrogen has received limited attention in sustainability transition scholarship. This paper addresses this knowledge gap by examining the emerging hydrogen transition in the Netherlands from a multi-system sociotechnical perspective. To achieve this, we adopted a framework that considers multiple niches and sociotechnical systems in parallel, using Event Sequence Analysis (ESA). The analysis provides a systematic reconstruction of (niche-)processes as networks of events for analysing hydrogen niche formation from 2001 to 2020 across four sociotechnical systems: industry, electricity, transport, and the built environment. The results reveal that, despite positive discourse and ambitious plans, investments and implementation remained limited. We provide possible explanations for this progress through a multi-system lens.

Backcasting has become a widely applied approach to address sustainability challenges when transformative changes are required. However, dispersed and contextualized knowledge of backcasting methodologies and practices needs to be systematized, codified, and synthesized to support researchers, commissioners, practitioners, and stakeholders in backcasting projects. In this paper, we address these issues by (i) concisely reviewing the evolution and current body of literature on backcasting and how this relates to other major types of futures and scenario studies and (ii) developing a design framework for researchers and practitioners that systematically covers all methodological choices with regard to key guiding questions to develop a backcasting methodology for a particular backcasting project. The developed design framework is based on four parts, characterized by the interrogatives when, which, how, and what, creating a comprehensive framework for describing a backcasting study.

In order to support transition to a circular economy, visions and strategies need to be developed for which participatory backcasting can be used. This paper reports on the effects of using serious games as a possible supporting (social) engagement and design tool for vision development in participatory backcasting and has been applied to circular business and industry parks. In order to test the effects on (social) engagement, a new framework was developed and used to evaluate engagement by measuring the game experience, perceived influence, and learning, as well as the social connections within these constructs. The effect of the vision design was measured using participant satisfaction and a vision analysis, identifying transformative elements and guiding goals and targets. The results show that a serious game is a suitable tool to support (social) engagement in participatory backcasting. As a design tool, it is suitable for the development of transformative elements, but the used game was not able to create guiding goals and targets.

The current focus of offshore wind industry and academia lies on regions with strong winds, neglecting areas with mild resources. Photovoltaics' cost reductions have shown that even mild resources can be harnessed economically, especially where electricity prices are high. Here, we study the technical and economic potential of offshore wind power in Indonesia as an example of mild-resource areas, using bias-corrected ERA5 data, turbine-specific power curves, and a detailed cost model. We show that low-wind-speed turbines could produce up to 6,816 TWh/year, which is 25 times Indonesia's electricity generation in 2018 and 3 times the projected 2050 generation, and up to 166 PWh/year globally. Although not yet competitive against current offshore turbines, low-wind turbines could become a crucial piece of the global climate mitigation effort in regions with vast marine areas and high electricity prices. As low-wind-speed turbines are not yet on the market, we recommend prioritizing their development.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has affected societies across the world while its economic impact has cut deeper than any recession since the Second World War. Climate change is potentially an even more disruptive and complex global challenge. Climate change could cause social and economic damage far larger than that caused by COVID-19. The current pandemic has highlighted the extent to which societies need to prepare for disruptive global environmental crises. Although the dynamics of combating COVID-19 and climate change are different, the priorities for action are the same: behavioral change, international cooperation to manage shared challenges, and technology's role in advancing solutions. For a sustainable recovery from the COVID-19 crisis to be durable and resilient, a return to ‘business as usual’ and the subsequent often environmentally destructive economic activities must be avoided as they have significantly contributed to climate change. To avoid this, we draw lessons from the experiences of the waves of the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond to advance sustainable development.

The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to widely change how consumers evaluate market offerings. In this research, we identified consumers’ emotions on the adoption of use-oriented Product-Service-Systems (PSS) and the effect of COVID-19 on such emotions using pre- and amid-COVID-19 samples. The results indicate that positive emotions are generally more associated with the process of adopting use-oriented PSS. However, the negative effect of COVID-19 on emotions influencing the decision to use the PSS is significant. We found that during the pandemic, consumers moved from the positive side of emotions to the more negative one. The emotions with the highest frequencies in pre-COVID-19 data collection (sympathy, joy, and peacefulness) suffered a significant descent effect due to the pandemic. Also, negative emotions such as fear, shame, and guilt, which were already present in the pre-COVID-19 phase, showed an increase in manifestations in the amid-COVID-19 sample. COVID-19 has increased self-interest in people, and emotions that predict altruism and concern for society were affected. We also found that previous use experience as well as gender and education do not significantly moderate the effect of COVID-19 on consumption emotions, although these demographic variables have been confirmed in other studies as important moderators in pro-environmental consumption. Finally, the results demonstrated that younger people (between 18 and 24 years old) tend to be more impacted by pandemic. Theoretically, our study contributes (1) by using an emotions scale specifically developed for consumption situations, allowing to assess a greater amount of emotions, (2) by analysing basic emotions, in addition to the self-conscious ones, that interfere in the adoption of use-oriented PSS, and (3) by confirming that an external traumatic event alters consumption-related emotions.