Emotions matter for public engagement in the emerging biobased economy

Abstract

This thesis explores the role of emotions for triggering public engagement in the emerging bio-based economy. Emotions have been found to be important in people’s communication, judgement formation decision making and interactions with our surroundings. In current engagement practises there is hardly any attention for emotions; how they can be vented, elicited or taken into account in a meaningful way. Approaches such as Q methodology, art and dinners have been studied as alternative means to elicit and articulate emotions hence triggering public engagement. Especially for such a distant issue as the emerging bio-based economy emotions might be a way to get people to consider what it all means, initiating their engagement.