Improving Innovations’ Readines Social Readiness
Social Readiness is the extent to which an innovation complies with public and private end users’ priorities and needs, as well as the organizational and governance requirements.
The uptake of new technologies is often hampered by not attending to societal values and concerns. BRIGAID seeks to improve the social acceptance of climate adaptation innovations by accounting for these factors early in the innovation cycle.
BRIGAID is working to establish an instrument for assessing the acceptance of climate adaptation innovations among end users and wider society. This ‘social readiness’ instrument draws on an eclectic mix of theoretical perspectives from across the social sciences including the sociocultural theory of technology choice and relational approaches to science and technology studies. Insights from these perspectives are operationalised using a multi-criteria method for quantitatively scoring and qualitatively evidencing the anticipated performance of adaptation innovations against social readiness indicators.
These indicators include:
- demographic preferences (e.g., education and location),
- basic user requirements (e.g., perceived usefulness and ease of use),
- psychological concerns (e.g., dread and unknown risks),
- sociocultural preferences (e.g., models of consent and institutional trust),
- sociomaterial expectations (e.g., sociotechnical feasibility and environmental impacts),
- and wider societal concerns (such as interference with nature and the distribution of societal benefits).
The instrument forms one part of a larger comprehensive, standardised methodology for testing and implementing adaptation innovations: the Test and Implementation Framework (TIF).