icis-e-book-06.pdf
(788.45 kB, PDF)
… change to various technologies and infrastructures, while on the other hand ensuring that values and consumer criteria change simultaneously. Transitions that fail to do so will disappoint in the end. We review two sustainability-oriented transitions where criteria have changed: the hygienic transition around 1900 and the waste management transitions at the end of the twentieth century. While in these cases people’s values, perceptions, and criteria changed as part of the transition, this does not … that actors use to judge the appropriateness of products, services, and systems. In the transition from sailing ships to steam ships fuelled by coal, for instance, the criteria for choosing ships did not change dramatically. Both types of ship competed in terms of tonnage, reliability, and speed, as sailing ships had done for decades or even centuries. In the transition from coal to gas, the basic aspects on which technologies had to compete did not change dramatically either, in terms of price, ease, and reliability. For sustainability transitions to occur, however, criteria need to change dramatically, or transitions run the risk of not being sustainable due to rebound effects …