Blockchaintechnologyhasintroducedthepossibilitytoexchangevalueandinformationthroughtheinternet without the supervision or permission from any third party intermediary. While many private and public entities have seen this as a chance to increase their operational efficiency, other ventures have been utilizing this sameedgeasameantodevelopnewinstitutionalregimesgiventheimpactontransactioncostreduction, The theories central to institutional economics claim that transaction costs are the ultimate driver for shifts in institutional settings. The purpose of the following research was to investigate whether the reduction in transaction costs allowed by blockchain technology is effectively causing new forms of institutions to arise. Given that blockchain is still in its infancy, there is a current lack of academic literature addressing its governance edge. Furthermore, the few studies available adopt a comparative approach, hence failing to explore the entirety of new institutional possibilities. For this reason, the following research utilized the Institutional Analysis and development framework developed by Elinor Ostrom as a holistic and institutional agnostic methodofanalysis. The particular application analyzed was the one of financial product exchanges. Today, the exchange of financial products as securities, is coordinated by hierarchical organizations, namely firms. As a matter of fact, multiple different firms are involvedintheexchangeoftheseproducts. Exchangesareresponsibleformatching buyers and sellers, clearing houses assume counter party risks and make sure the trading parties can meet their obligations, and custodians and central security depositories are responsible for the final settlement of transactions. Furthermore, reconciliation costs are incurred by all participants when updating their respective databases. Given that blockchains are fundamentally public distributed records of transaction, they effectively undermine the economic efficiency and logic of the current systems of clearing, settlement andreconciliation. Decentralized exchanges are tackling these issues today. For the purpose of the analysis a total of three decentralized exchanges were shortlisted from the over 200 existing. The first filter of choice was to choose between exchanges native to the Ethereum blockchain. This because, being the oldest in the space, they present the most well developed and resilient communities apt for the analysis. Next, exchanges were further filtered by total liquidity in the protocol, or total value locked, and trading volume. The three exchanges selected for the analysis in the end were Uniswap, Sushiswap and Curve. Given that these protocols run on a public and permissionless blockchain, it was possible to retrieve large amounts of data on their relative performance. A number of data acquisition and analytics platforms were utilized for data analysis and visualization namely, Dune, Tally and Sybil

This research focusses on the decision-making processes of energy regions regarding the energy transition in The Netherlands. The Netherlands has ratified the Climate Agreement in 2019, which thirty energy regions combined need to put in their efforts to reach the target of producing 35 TWh in 2030. One of the key elements in the energy regions is the active involvement of citizens through participation. However, a good relationship between the municipalities in the energy region is not self-evident. The thirty energy regions in the Netherlands have the task to form and lead and provide access to information and other forms of citizen support. Every energy region takes its own approach to involve citizens in their energy transition decision-making. Therefore, it is interesting to study to what extent and in which manners energy regions are able to involve citizens in the RES decision-making and in which ways governments are able to live up to their own participation goals. This embedded case study focusses on energy region Holland Rijnland, with a focus on six municipalities in this region: Katwijk, Leiden, Lisse, Zoeterwoude, Alphen aan den Rijn and Nieuwkoop.

Taken the challenges and research objectives from previous paragraphs into consideration, the following main research question can be formed:
“In which ways is citizen participation present, organized and influencing the initiation, design and implementation phases of the energy transition in the energy region Holland Rijnland?”

Background & Objective: The unprecedented value and long­term uncertainties of gene therapies have challenged established health technology assessment (HTA) methods. Real-world data (RWD) and real-world evidence (RWE) may mitigate the encountered uncertainties. However, empirical evidence appears to be lacking in the literature. This research aimed to provide this evidence and identify implications for EU-wide gene therapy joint clinical assessments.

Methods: An initial literature review laid the theoretical foundation for the research. A retrospective comparative analysis delivered empirical evidence on RWD/RWE usage in gene therapy HTAs. Preliminary findings were probed in three use cases and verified in semi­structured interviews.

Results: Nineteen HTA reports published by the HTA bodies G­BA (Germany) and NICE (England) were identified for the ten in­scope gene therapies.
Whereas NICE had an average inclusion of 14 sources per HTA report (with an acceptance rate of 56%), G­BA had 8 (with 32% acceptance rate).
While RWD/RWE supporting evidence on an external comparator had the lowest acceptance rate, RWD/RWE on intervention effectiveness had the highest acceptance rate. Insufficient information to substantiate the choice of RWD/RWE and inappropriate RWE study design was the most common exclusion rationales for RWD/RWE.

Conclusions: The presented empirical evidence adds to the current knowledge base in two ways; it provides empirical evidence on HTAs of gene therapies (1) and RWD/RWE usage in gene therapy HTAs (2). This work provides insights into how RWD/RWE usage differs between HTA bodies and explicates relevant considerations for gene therapy manufacturers when using RWD/RWE in future HTA submissions. It also proposes that alignment on evidentiary requirements and assessment elements will optimise the transferability of future joint clinical assessment outcomes to national HTA bodies. Knowledge transfer and knowledge sharing initiatives will play a pivotal role in achieving such a consensus.

Traditional Chinese ports are still under the influence of the "Economy centralized principle", economic interests are amplified while environmental and social impacts are seriously ignored. In this way, disharmony appeared and severely interrupted the execution of the projects. Therefore, an approach which could bridge the environmental and social conflicts is urgently needed. Responsible innovation is such an approach.

Under the responsible innovation framework, the essence of conflicts lies in stakeholder's value conflicts. Therefore, research questions are proposed:
- Have Chinese ports seriously considered the value conflicts with other stakeholders and realized Responsible Innovation?
- How can Chinese ports from their best efforts bridge the value gaps, realize Responsible Innovation?

In this study, Shenzhen Yantian port extension project is introduced as the case to study as Shenzhen is the most open city since China's "Open up and Reform". In addition, in responsible innovation analytical framework, determine the stakeholders involved, the impacts brought by the project and value conflicts among stakeholders are important steps in terms of detecting the essential value conflicts and find a possible solution to bridge the value gaps. As a result, three analyses are made for the purpose of determining the value conflicts between Chinese ports and other stakeholders, they are stakeholder analysis, impact assessment and value conflict analysis.

From three analyses, this study concludes that Shenzhen Yantian port did not completely take: "all the stakeholders involved", "impacts brought by the project" and "value conflicts between them and other stakeholders" into account. In other words, Shenzhen Yantian port has not realized responsible innovation completely.

To assist Chinese ports in realizing responsible innovation, Multi Actor Negotiation Committee (MANC) mechanism is recommended for its advantage that MANC offers an effective channel for stakeholders to communicate with others and strategically make compromises which would bridge the value gaps.

Interview and questionnaire are two instruments applied in collecting data and all the analyses are based on reasonable inferences and assumptions.

This thesis aims to understand if decision-making processes and institutional factors in Dutch municipalities hinder or enable the implementation of climate adaptation measures in urban drainage systems, and consequently climate adaptation efforts in the Netherlands. Interview findings showed that decision-making processes are evolving to incorporate climate adaptation efforts where possible. Implementation of climate adaptation measures was identified to occur when there was an opportunity to incorporate them into other necessary infrastructure projects, such as large-scale neighbourhood redevelopments, however taking advantage of these opportunities depended not only on their existence, but also on current institutional factors. Frequently identified hindering and enabling factors included the availability of financial resources, the current regulatory framework, fragmented roles and responsibilities within municipalities and the availability of sufficient and appropriately skilled personnel. Factors such as cultural/cognitive resistance and political incentive to action were also identified as hindering and enabling climate adaptation efforts. Interview findings also showed that in addition to the institutional factors, the actors involved in the decision-making process and the resources available to these actors played an important role in the decision-making processes. Four key actors were identified from the data: technical designers/ decision-makers, the local community, the municipal council and housing developers. The support or resistance of these actors strongly impacted the duration of the decision-making process and success implementing climate adaptive measures. Though the decision-making processes are evolving, the use of opportunity-based initiation tactics and ineffective bargaining tactics resulted in processes were often stalled or blocked prior to decision implementation. Improvements can be made to the decision-making tactics used by practitioners, however, the processes by themselves were not found to act as distinct hinderances. The institutional context within which these decisions are made has significant influence on the outcomes of the process and the institutional factors identified indicate that the current context is more hindering than enabling. Strategies to address some of these hindering factors can therefore also facilitate the decision-making processes and lead to an increase in implementation of climate adaptation in urban drainage systems.

Reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 is vital to limit global warming to 1.5◦C. Decarbonizing the heating sector that is globally responsible for half of total energy consumption is necessary to achieve climate-neutrality goals. The complex nature of the heating sector (characterized by variable market demands, and complicated stakeholder networks) has resisted the stakeholder alignment necessary to develop sustainable heating solutions. Co-creation provides a viable solution - a governance structure characterized by multiple, semi-autonomous centres for decision-making. There is little insight, however, into co-creation strategies in the field of sustainable heating. State-of-the-art literature indicates the need to explore the theoretical underpinnings for co-creation. Furthermore, if performed incorrectly, co-creation can result in the destruction of the public value and citizen rights it aims to uphold. The Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD)Framework provides a systematic method to analyze policy activities, over varying temporal, geographic and socioeconomic contexts. This body of research takes a novel approach in applying the IAD framework to understand the factors that aid and impede the development of effective co-creation. The framework demonstrates its efficacy in assessing both the process of co-creation and its outcomes. The IAD Framework was applied on qualitative data in the form of interviews and archival data from co-creation participants in four pilot cities that are part of the EU-Interreg 2 Seas Sustainable Heating Implementation of Fossil-Free Technologies project. Results show that supportive project management conditions such as stable funding, comprehensive planning support and the involvement of key stakeholders (actors) across the different stages of co-creation are vital for its success. The presence of community attributes such as shared values and goals motivate stakeholders to collaborate together. When actors who adopt the role of coordinators view co-creation favourably, they can use their administrative skills and social capital to bring together stakeholders in an effective manner to find solutions acceptable to all. Involvement of key actors in the initial planning stages is important to develop strategies that are tailored to specific communities. The presence of neutral actors such as research institutes is helpful across all stages and was shown to be vital in initiating co-creative strategies and facilitating supportive conditions for social learning. Furthermore, this study found that pre-existing governance structures between interacting stakeholders determines the pathway in which co-creation evolves. Pre-existing power dynamics, combined with the crucial role played by coordinators in the group, form patterns of interaction that tend to reinforce governance structures that do not allow for effective co-creation. Policymakers may benefit from the following recommendations - a) coordinators must commit to involving key stakeholders, including citizens, in all phases of co-creation; b) when co-creation is initiated by actors who are traditionally in authoritative positions in society, provisions must be made for capacity-building in other stakeholder groups. This study focuses on co-creation pathways when initiated by actors traditionally in powerful roles, in liberal democracies in Western Europe. Future research can focus on co-creation pathways when initiated in a bottom-up fashion. The development of co-creation in different political and societal settings merits further research.

In order to fight climate change, the EU is providing funds for knowledge development on water electrolysis technologies. Numerous projects have been funded so far, and an EU wide water electrolysis network has been formed, however, from an RTOs perspective, there is no overview of knowledge development and knowledge diffusion regarding the European Green hydrogen technological innovation system. In this thesis, we have used the CORDIS database to develop a social network model of all the water electrolysis projects funded by the EU, alongside we performed interviews with central European RTOs and reviewed project reports to analyze knowledge development and diffusion. We have summarized the key areas for knowledge development in PEM, SOE and Alkaline networks and we have also found certain issues related to knowledge development and diffusion within the green hydrogen network. Given these issues, we finally proposed recommendation for RTOs and the EU in order to improve knowledge development and diffusion.

This study defines who is at risk of automation and discusses policies to ensure the vulnerable groups are seen. The study of Nedelkoska and Quintini (2018) is taken as the role model: The risk of automation for individuals across OECD countries is calculated by associating the expert assessment conducted by Frey and Osborne (2013) with individuals’ skills used at work collected by PIAAC. The analysis is improved by training the model with different country datasets and including additional skills into the analysis. 14% of the total employment of 33 countries is found to be at significantly high risk of automation. Workers at the highest risk of losing their jobs are more likely to be less-educated, low-income earners who perform unskilled jobs. The risk of automation declines as the level of education increases. Therefore, this study highlights the importance of training and reskilling the risky-groups to cope with the possible adverse effects of technological progress.

The rise of e-commerce makes shopping easier than ever. It also puts pressure on logistic service providers, their employees, traffic and the environment. Parcel deliveries to service points or parcel lockers could release some of this pressure. However, service points are only scarcely used by Dutch consumers, while parcel lockers still lack a dense network. In addition, it is unclear how Dutch consumers can be persuaded to use these options more, and what kind of travel mode they will use for their parcel pick-ups. Two stated choice experiments were constructed to find out which factors influence Dutch consumer preferences for different delivery methods as well as the choice for a travel mode to pick-up a parcel. The results indicate that delivery prices and delivery moments are important factors that influence consumer choices for a delivery option. Several background characteristics, like age and current e-shopping behaviour, also have an influence. For the pick-up mode choices, distance and weight were most important. Here current travel behaviour plays a large role as well. There is potential in setting prices and delivery moments such that the self-pickup methods are used more. Building a dense parcel locker network can further accelerate this, and will also favour pick-up modes like walking and cycling. Future research should, therefore, focus on the complex situation in the Dutch parcel market, in order to analyse how more collaboration between the different parties in this sector can be improved such that prices, delivery moment and distances to pick-up points favour pick-up methods more.

Many grand challenges like climate change or health security cannot be solved by only the policymakers. Support and expertise of citizens is needed to solve these challenges (Gerton & Mitchell, 2019). Due to the demand for public participation, Participatory Value Evaluation (PVE) fulfils the needs of involving many participants in a scalable way in the process of participation and evaluation. PVE is unique in the way that it allows people to be a virtual decision-maker in a specific context. This method is not a decision-making tool in itself, but it allows participants to make their quantitative decisions and asks them to motivate their answers qualitatively. This results in qualitative and quantitative data about their choices. This research has explored opportunities of Natural Language Processing to automate the qualitative data processing of motivations given by citizens regarding a policy. The focus of this research has been set on human values to categorize the motivations of participants.Results from qualitative data analysis can support the process of policymaking. The outcomes of this exploratory study have been reflected by stakeholders involved in the case study to validate the application within the domain of decision-making. One outcome is that results from qualitative data analysis in PVE should never become a decision-making tool by itself. These outcomes help in creativity and reflection of the policy. Policymakers want to have outcomes of public evaluation and they want to be to act upon them. Analysing the qualitative data based on values give substance to certain values and can give guidelines on how to take these values into account. One way of doing this is visualising the values, norms and design principles in a value hierarchy using Value Sensitive Design. By doing this, knowledge of ‘the public’ can be used to support making policies.

There have been huge investments being made in direction of citizen science projects to enhance the engagement between science and society. To achieve goals and for the success of citizen science projects, a crucial element is getting more researchers to participate in citizens science projects. Besides harmoniously sustaining the participation of existing researchers who are already engaged in citizen science. While doing this, we identified two primary knowledge gaps: one, there is limited and insufficient research that articulates the perspectives of researchers to understand what motivates them to participate in citizen science. Two, even the limited available literature, is published by the researchers who are involved in citizen science projects themselves. That has more chance of publication bias and lacks critical scrutiny. For instance, these literatures give the impression that participation from researchers is because of their enthusiasm to enhance scientific awareness in society and to drive citizen’s positive attitudes towards science. Despite there have been projects where the participation from the researchers have not been particularly great.Q-method was identified as the suitable method to identify the perspective of the researchers, as it has been successfully applied in a range of disciplines from political science to environmental science. This method uses Q-factors analysis, that makes the researchers the variables of analysis. Stephenson (1953) argued, if there existed significant clusters of correlations in the participant’s profile, these clusters could be factorised and described as shared perspective and individuals could be measured in relevance to them. Overall, seven distinct perspectives of the researchers related to participation in citizen science are identified. These perspectives are divided into three broad groups based on their inclination to participate in citizen science projects. It is interesting that these groups exactly correlate with the experience of the researchers, that shows that perspectives are in association with on-ground thoughts. Group 1: represents the perspective of researchers who have intrinsic motivation to participate in citizen science and these researchers are experienced in citizens science. These perspectives are revealed by perspective 1 & perspective 2. These researchers are expected to participate on their own. Group 2: represents perspective of researchers who have no interested or inclination to participate in citizen science projects, as they consider it not suitable method answer their research question. These researchers have no experience in citizen science. These perspectives are revealed by perspective 4 & perspective 5. Group 3: these researchers are inclined to participate in citizen science, but some inhibitors in citizen science practise are preventing them to participate in citizen science. Perspectives of this group are revealed by perspective 3, perspective 6 & perspective 7. The policy recommendation is suggested to citizen science association, institutions framing ethical policy and to researchers. This research contributes in three different ways, one it provides critical scrutiny of the literature published on perspectives of researchers, by comparing with what is discussed in the literature with on-ground thoughts of researchers. Two, this research identifies latent perspectives that have not been disused in the field of citizen science. Three, the research identifies controversies in the perspectives of researchers. However, research has limitations due to choices made during the research. One, no concrete conclusions, could be made specific to any scientific discipline or level of engagement between high-level involvement actors, due to the broad scope of the research. Two, research focuses on participation between high-level involvement actors. Three, the use of free sorting of statements to reduce the time for answering the survey. For future research, two controversies in the perspectives of researchers are identified that can be scope for entire new research in the field of citizen science. One, compensation of citizens in citizen science projects. Two, different model to increase scientific literacy are identified between perspective 6, perspective 7 and perspective 1.

Wind farms are one of the main means for sustainable energy supply in the Netherlands. In the period of 2013-2020 provincial governments were tasked with siting a certain number of megawatts of wind energy on their territory. This led to the development of wind farms in many Dutch municipalities, of which the decision-making process has in many cases recently finished. In this process, citizen participation played a large role. This thesis research provides an exploratory study on the influence of this practice, using the following research question: How does the current practice of citizen participation influence the decision-making process of wind farms in the Netherlands? To answer this question, three cases have been selected of wind farms where the decision-making process was recently completed: Weijerswold in Coevorden, Spui in Hoeksche Waard and Nij Hiddum-Houw in Súdwest-Fryslân. These cases are chosen as they are very diverse regarding the type of initiator, the citizens involvement and the role of the municipality. Literature and policy documents are studied, and interviews are held with policy-makers, wind farm developers, citizens and experts. For each case, the main groups of actors that most highly influence the decision-making process are described: provincial and municipal government, initiators of wind energy and participating and activist citizens. The division of citizens into these two groups is somewhat artificial, as in reality these groups are not so strictly distinct. It also is noted that citizens participating and representing other citizens can be difficult, as in every case there are also citizens who fiercely object to the entire participation process.
All three cases are analysed and evaluated using the Rounds model of G.R. Teisman (2000). In this model, the activities of the different actors are described in different ‘rounds of decision-making’. It focusses on the interaction between actors, who can make decisions in varying combinations. This thesis includes case-specific graphical representations of the Rounds model. This has not been done before by other authors who applied this model, even though it is very suitable and adds clarity to the description in text: broad outlines are easier to visualise and cross-case analysis is simplified. The cases are also classified on Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation, the most used academic reference for classification by influence. On this ladder, the current practice of citizen participation can best be described as placation or partnership, depending on the specific case. It is hereby noted that this influence is not the only valid measurement by which to assess a citizen participation process. Furthermore, six factors of influence are determined, which each have their own influence on the decision-making process. The analysis shows that municipalities especially take on very different roles in the process, ranging from full opposition of the proposed wind farm to organising the participation process. They are not forced into either position, but decide for themselves. Furthermore, government shapes the participation process, regardless of whether this is the province or the municipality. They determine the first four factors: the timeliness of citizen involvement, the flexibility of the government process framework, the diversity of the citizen board composition and the degree of decision options in the citizen board. The timeliness is one of the most mentioned issues: in all the cases, the decision for a number of megawatts had already been made before the citizen participation process in the form of a citizen board started. The flexibility of the process is an issue when citizens want to organise the process somewhat differently, or need more time to make decisions and inform the other citizens than initially envisioned. Regarding the citizen board composition, there are cases where only nearby residents are represented and ones where there are also many other societal groups, both having different advantages. When it comes to the degree of options, it is also a question of perception to how open the options really still are. Furthermore, the attitude of the initiators is of great importance in the participation process, as is described regarding the fifth factor: the initiator’s relative willingness to extra-legal concessions. What they have to do is not completely legally determined, so this willingness to make concessions that they are not strictly obliged to also influences the influence of citizens in the participation process. The sixth factor is the experienced legitimacy of the participation process and its outcome. This experienced legitimacy is influenced by the other factors, but action committees can also have a large influence on this, as is illustrated clearly in the Spui case. In general, it is very important that citizens are put in such a position that they can have influence. This includes, for example, that they are assisted by an expert. When the right conditions are created, citizens can have real influence on the outcome of the process, ranging from the exact location of the wind turbines to financial compensation. However, their influence on the process itself is usually very limited: government, and to a lesser extent initiators, should provide the boundaries in which citizen participation can be executed well. Another conclusion is that the current legal framework is insufficient to secure a well-designed citizen participation process. This is illustrated by the wide variety of methods of organising this process in the different cases and mentioned by multiple interviewees. Research from a legal perspective is therefore also of vital importance.

The world is facing climate change which has sever impacts on extreme weather events, biodiversity and rising seas. Greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced to counteract climate change. One specific way to contribute to that reduction is setting Zero-Emission (ZE) zones to ban fossil fuel vehicles in urban areas which will presumably lead to a reduction of 1.0 Mton CO2. The ZE zones will be initiated from 2025 in the 30-40 largest municipalities in the Netherlands for passenger cars and delivery vans. Prior research has been applied to large construction projects and not on small-scale construction projects. A literature review resulted in how to classify small-scale construction projects into groups. The difference of these groups is necessary to structure the small-scale construction projects on logistics characteristics and finally on feasible logistics solutions. The three groups are micro (<150 m2; <€0.3 mln), small (150 – 1,000 m2; €0.3 mln – €3 mln) and medium (1,000 – 10,000 m2; €3 mln - €20 mln). The vehicles used for small-scale renovation projects are mostly delivery vans, box trucks and loader crane trucks. Occasionally, tractors and heavy trucks are used. There are three kinds of transport movements: material transport, personnel transport and equipment transport. A list of feasible logistics solutions has been determined grouped on micro, small and medium construction projects and on the type of transport movements. A stakeholder analysis has been conducted to understand the different roles and perspectives of the stakeholder. The basic design cycle has been used to design the feasible logistics solutions and to summarize the findings in a booklet that can be used by the key stakeholders (contractors, wholesalers, transporters, municipalities) to know which logistics solutions are possible for them.

Arsenic contamination of groundwater in Bangladesh is one of the largest naturally occurring groundwater calamity in South Asia. The rural people, about 64% of the population (104 million people) suffer the most from this grand challenge as they are still heavily dependent on groundwater based tubewells which are arsenic contaminated. Government interventions to switch to other arsenic mitigation technologies such Piped Water Supply Systems have not been very successful despite the technology being a long-term feasible solution in arsenic-affected areas. Rural communities find it difficult to make the switch from tubewells to piped water due to issues of high costs, less demand and extensive monitoring requirements of these systems. To align itself with the SGD 6.1 (“Clean Drinking Water for All”) and with the aim to climb WHO/UNICEF’s JMP’s highest ladder for drinking water, the Government of Bangladesh has installed multiple Piped Water Schemes in water-stressed areas. These schemes are technically viable in water-stressed areas and financially supported by the World Bank, UNICEF, WHO and other global organisations. However, at community level, institutionally, they face the challenge of Adoptability and Sustainability. Taking a case study approach, this research aims to suggest strategies that can be implemented to increase community adoption and sustainability of Piped Water Supply Systems in the rural areas of Bangladesh to ensure arsenic-safe water in every household-tap. The goal is to provide institutional insights to a research organisation in Bangladesh. Two relevant methodologies for institutional analysis developed by Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom: The Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) and Ostrom’s Design Principles for Governance of Common Pool Resources, are used to tackle this problem. The IAD framework is applied at three different levels of governance (central-local and community) to study the gaps in policy implementation at three different phases of the design process “Planning-Implementation-Community Adoption of Piped Water Schemes”. The findings from the IAD suggest that there are defined gaps between actual policy outcomes and policy expectations. The outcomes of the IAD analysis at each level, are evaluated against six of Ostrom’s evaluation criteria. The design principles are then applied to each of the findings from the evaluation to bridge that gap between actual and desired policy outcomes. Three main design principles, a) Collective-Choice Arrangements, b) Graduated Sanctions and c) Nested Enterprises, support the development of new institutional reforms. Proposed institutional reforms, which are robust in nature, lead to suggesting strategies that that can help to increase rural community adoption and sustainability of piped water supply systems to ensure arsenic-safe water in every household-tap.

The GHG-emissions of the Dutch transport sector are ever increasing, mainly caused by the growth in the number of traffic movements. These movements are heavily influenced by the growth of the e-commerce sector and e-commerce related last mile deliveries. Hence, this study aims at providing more insight in sustainable alternatives for delivering parcels over the last mile within city limits. By applying a Multi-Actor Multi-Criteria Approach (MAMCA), a sustainability framework for last mile deliveries is defined to assess the alternatives' sustainable performance. It turns out that parcel lockers result in the highest benefits, followed by the implementation of night delivery. The last alternative that was implemented in the simulation model, the city hub, was highly inefficient, due to the transhipment of high volumes on small vehicles. However, since the city hub is able of reducing the emissions in cities significantly, other ways of implementation have to be considered before really rejecting the alternative.

The purpose of this research is to study the implementation of ecological modernization branding in the cities of The Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht in the Netherlands. These cities use ecological modernization branding to attract people, projects and investments. For example, they may project the image of being ‘smart’ and commission projects to showcase that they are in fact a smart city. However, the overall image that appears from the literature is that there exists a substantial gap between the brand image and its actual implementation. An assessment framework is synthesized in order to carry out this study, this analytical framework addresses numerous aspects: municipal input, throughput and output factors, the local action arena, projects and outcomes to assess the implementation. To this end, the main research question is:

How do the three Dutch cities in the ‘Randstad’ i.e. Utrecht, Rotterdam and The Hague implement the programs, policies and attract investments that adhere to the city brands they project?

A comparative case study approach is best suited as we can identify similarities, differences and themes across regions and cities using the assessment framework to analyze the cases. Methods used will primarily be desk research and interviews to complement the comparative study and will add nuance to our understanding of ÈM branding. The results revealed three types of EM brand labels present in these cities.

In the era of open government, citizens are one of the stakeholders of a country. With the emerging concept of transparency and accountability, supported by ICTs deployments in government areas, citizens have more access to the government. Budget is among the many areas within governments that have utilized ICTs for many purposes, one of them is to share financial data. With this data, citizens can monitor how and where the government spent their taxes. The activity of following and monitoring the money flow is referred to as budget expenditure tracking. Citizens monitoring the flow of money through the website or downloading the raw spending data to the tracking can be seen as online engagement.
Even though ICTs have been largely deployed, an online engagement still has its challenges. In some countries, the effort to provide opportunities for engagement to take place is relatively low. Governments need to provide opportunities for citizens to engage in the BET exercises process. Open spending portal is one of many ways to achieve this goal. Through this portal, governments can publish their spending data, and the public can freely access and reuse the data. However, the realization is not that simple. One of the reasons why online citizen engagement is difficult to realize is the unavailability of guidelines for e-participation. Therefore, there is a need to formulate clear guidelines on how to engage citizens in open spending portals for budget expenditure exercises. This research aims at developing a set of design principles that can enhance citizen engagement in open spending portals. Using Design Science Research, the author developed a set of design principles that can be grouped into two categories based on their purposes: to enable active citizens and to enable pro-active citizens. In total, there are 22 principles that have been developed to enhance citizen engagement in BET exercises through open spending portals. Since the principles are not yet implemented in existing designs, the evaluation was conducted to see the relevance between the developed design principles and existing problems. The potentiality of the developed design principles in enhancing citizen engagement was confirmed. However, future research needs to be done to assess the impact of the developed design principles in real life.

Mobile money has just started to emerge in Western countries; however Kenyans have already been using phones for transactions for 10 years mainly through the mobile money system MPesa. This hints towards a largely ignored innovation potential residing in developing countries that can even allow them to lead the path of innovation for specific sectors. To assess the potential for developing countries to become lead markets a framework was created based on the literature of lead markets and frugal innovation, a case study on MPesa and interviews on mobile money. The framework can be used for policy makers to assess whether their domestic market is suitable for the market introduction and further development of an innovation, thereby contributing to the effectiveness of innovation policy. The lead market potential of developing countries resides mainly in their capability of redefining the fulfilment of basic needs. This research can be further improved by studying the emergence of mobile money in developed countries and its effects on mobile money in Africa can provide insight into the sustainability of developing countries as lead market potential and whether they are truly global lead markets to further improve this research.

The European Union (EU) has been regulating roaming since 1997, and has developed different policies aiming to promote transparency in prices and improve competitiveness across the members. With both positive and negative outcomes, the European Commission (EC) had a long learning process where different regulatory measures were introduced and modified according to the results obtained. Despite the fact regional mobile usage has been increasing since the first attempt on regulation, roaming has been limited by other factors such as wholesale and retail prices.

While Europe faces challenges related to political extremism, large refugee influxes, economic stagnation, and scepticism related to European integration, the EC aimed for a tangible policy that could show the benefits of the supra-national body to the citizens. After different economic analyses commissioned by the EU showed a feasible possibility of eliminating roaming surcharges, a new step was proposed. Since mid-June 2017, mobile phone users across the European Economic Area (EEA) started experiencing a new European Union (EU) policy related to the roaming usage. The Roaming Like At Home (RLAH) policy became a milestone in the European political process towards a Digital Single Market. Mobile users were benefitted by avoiding roaming surcharges when travelling across countries of the EEA, while telecom operators were limited in the maximum prices they could charge to other foreign operators for the wholesale market. Operators were protected by fixed price caps and a Fair Use Policy (FUP) aimed to avoid abuses from users, as the differences between domestic markets across Europe are still large.

The EC based the decision in a market failure of the roaming market, which needed regulation to be solved. By analysing the behaviour of the market, the prices across the Union, among other factors, the EC believed that the RLAH policy would be a correct regulatory approach to solve the market failure, while promoting a Digital Single Market across countries. However, the justification was based merely in economic values, usually obtained from a Neo-classical (NCE) or New Institutional (NIE) economic perspective. The social values behind the policy were not explicitly considered in the analysis and were not used as justification for the decision process.

As different journalists, organizations and influential persons argue that the EU has become a technocratic body where the voice of Europeans is not heard, it becomes paramount to understand what is behind the European policies and if the social values are being implicitly considered by the stakeholders involved in the decision-making process. Thus, this thesis aims to answer the following research question: “How can we assess the societal values related to the implementation of the Roaming Like At Home (RLAH) policy of the European Union for the case of the Netherlands?”

The report initially develops a deep analysis on the different steps and motivations of the EC related to the policy, especially in the regulations from 2007 and onwards. It aims to understand the reasons behind the regulations, and concludes that both NCE and NIE are not enough to justify the intervention, using Original Institutional Economics (OIE) for it. A discussion on the public and social values is followed, where specific definitions are used to determine what are the most important social values to be considered within the policy. With the help of experts, a short list of ten values is obtained.

A stakeholder analysis is used to determine which are the actors involved in the policy, including those supra-national bodies, domestic and international lobby groups, telecom operators and regulatory bodies. By using the Best-Worst Method (BWM), a Multi Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) method which allows to determine hierarchies between non-measurable criteria, the short list of values is used as criteria for surveys performed to those stakeholders willing to answer. In order to determine the position of the Dutch population, as this report scope is limited to the Netherlands, a combination of three stakeholders is used to determine the hierarchy of the social values: the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Consumentenbond and the Bedrijfstelecommunicatie Grootgebruikers (BTG).

The results of the report show alignment between the hierarchy of values of the EC and the Dutch people’s representatives, but strong differences between the latter and the regulators and telecom representatives. Although the stakeholder analysis does show alignment regarding publicly-available interests of some of the stakeholders, such as economic values, the intangible interests seen in the results of the hierarchy demonstrate a different guiding compass for each organization.

The thesis also shows how the actual approach for the determination of the value of a policy is not considering the intangible values that are behind any human person or organization. It is proposed to promote thinking in “humane” markets, rather than perfect markets, and to consider non-measurable criteria to assess the final value of a policy. It also questions whether the policy values can be separated from the individual values, as there is a close relation between them; thus, avoiding considering the individual value perspective of citizens could lead to future problems in the values a policy defends.

As the research faces different limitations, several future steps are proposed. Firstly, it is proposed to analyse whether the results obtained can be discussed with those representatives of the Dutch population in the parliament by comparing their expectations with the answers obtained in the BWM, aiming to analyse the representativeness of political decision-makers towards this policy. Secondly, the research also proposes using the results of the value hierarchy, and attempting to create a Willingness To Pay for values, as some of the considered ones could be measurable in an utilitarian perspective. A third proposal refers to analyse how the hierarchy of values of the policy differs across the domestic markets in Europe by using theories in transplantation of policy, aiming to overcome the geographical limitation of this thesis. Finally, a different theoretical approach could be used with the capability theory, focusing the criteria to be used in the future capabilities of the population, rather than the functionings.

The EU General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR) is about to come in force in May 2018. It poses new queries for both policymakers and businesses. Policymakers want o know how effective the new EU GDPR will be while the businesses would like to know how the EU GDPR should be implemented. To answer that question, empirical studies on how businesses/organizations implement privacy and data protection as well as their perception towards the EU GDPR are needed. This thesis aims to answer the fill this gap by mixed methods. Literature review and interview are exercised to get the current practices, while survey and statistic analyses are done to investigate the organizations' plans to change related to the EU GDPR. The findings are interesting, which include but not limited to the existence of DPO and organizations' high dependency would not limit the organizations' plan to change. Based on the findings, a number of recommendations are formulated for both policymakers and the practitioners, such as the encouragement to designate a DPO, to specify different approach of enforcement by policymaker for different industrial sectors and to be open to having menu of contracts by organizations for a balanced flexibility.