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- Convenor:
-
Karen Moesker
(TU Delft)
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- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract:
Transformative technologies often face societal pushback despite sustainability promises. The concepts acceptance and acceptability are a means to alleviate this issue, but agreed-on interpretations are lacking. This panel seeks to bridge understandings by inviting multidisciplinary contributions.
Long Abstract:
Emerging technologies have increasingly encountered societal resistance in recent years despite their promised transformative potential for a more sustainable future. To overcome resistance towards potentially beneficial technologies, researchers and practitioners increasingly focus on acceptance and acceptability when shaping technology implementation strategies. However, these concepts lack precise definitions, resulting in a spectrum of interpretations and proposed approaches hindering efficient development in technology research. Often, the different interpretations of the concepts depend not only on any specific research discipline but also on the type of technology in focus. For example, consumer-centred technologies usually focus on the acceptance and acceptability aspects of the individual. In contrast, these concepts are seen through the lens of institutions and social dynamics for large infrastructures.
This multidisciplinary panel aims to connect differing understandings of acceptance and acceptability concepts. With this, the panel seeks to create a substantive discourse on the challenges and benefits of actively pursuing approaches that focus on these concepts across different disciplines. A wide range of contributions is welcome, such as theoretical advancements, particular understandings of the concepts in a specific technological context, and empirical findings.
We envision a 5-minute pitch per presenter on their contribution to the topic. This presentation can be traditional, but other forms are also most welcome. After, we would like to do a workshop where we split the group into smaller groups and provide several questions that people need to answer with their own research and technology in mind. The answers will be collected on a poster from which the whole group will try to combine the findings, potentially creating sorting categories for different interpretations, technologies or empirical findings. With this workshop, we hope to further the understanding of what acceptance and acceptability mean in theory as well as in practice, increasing the robustness of technology implementation processes.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1Karen Moesker (TU Delft)
Long abstract:
With the increasing reliance on technological advancements, it becomes imperative to critically examine and evaluate their implications on society and the environment. The concepts of acceptance and acceptability have gained prominence among researchers shaping technology implementation strategies. Especially in research fields such as the social sciences, ethics of technology and innovation sciences, the importance of the concepts is rising. However, the lack of precise definitions for these concepts leads to diverse interpretations, compromising their usefulness in technology development and impeding further progress in research endeavours. This paper offers an exploratory review of these essential concepts and develops a schematic overview highlighting the varied overarching interpretations of these concepts: the “funnel of acceptance and acceptability”. It illustrates how different research levels – institutional, societal, and individual – dictate the relevant interpretation of these concepts. The funnel metaphor emphasises the interconnectedness of these interpretations and underscores the importance of equally addressing all research levels to ensure technology implementation processes advance in a desirable and responsible manner.
Jonas PIGEON (ENGIE Lab CRIGEN)
Long abstract:
The late 1980s saw a surge in attention towards social acceptance within the renewable energy and low-carbon technology sectors, particularly highlighted by opposition faced by wind power farm developers despite positive public opinion towards wind power. Much research in this field focuses on factors enhancing acceptance before the actual diffusion of innovations, often repeating similar investigations for each innovation and not challenging the concept's ingrained Technology/Society dichotomy.
This talk draws from research material on social acceptance of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to document how STS and policy sciences approaches could provide relevant insights to improve the understanding of this issue. Indeed, various research on technological expectations (Borup et al., 2006) or narratives developed by innovation developers (Deuten & Rip, 2000) to launch their products provides relevant insights on issues considered by a technology. Then, a technological project is no longer the sum of technological artifacts but a defined vision of a society. From the perspective of acceptance, the challenge is no longer considering factors influencing the perception of a defined technological system but instead considering the consistency and competition between technology developers and alternative stories promoted by representatives from local territories, economic sectors, and national government. This talk aims to document this "comparative narrative analysis" approach, enabling researchers to understand the motive of some stakeholders' opposition and reinterpret the developer's narratives to integrate the technological artifact in an alternative story by other types of stakeholders. Then these insights are critical when considering the social acceptance issue.
Clemens Ackerl (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology)
Long abstract:
Using the example of the energy transition as socio-technical transformation, this contribution explores the role of trust as conceptual bridge between acceptance and acceptability. The energy transition is broadly conceived as contested and complex endeavour – all the more as society depends on the system whilst the implied changes are to be taking place (Büscher et al., 2020). These circumstances bring about an array of proposed solutions and negotiated societal interventions – and questions of acceptance and acceptability. Crucial example for this is the missing acceptance of and, to some extent, explicit resistance against energy grid development projects. Current debates discuss these pushbacks as not just challenging the respective envisioned socio-technical configurations, but also conceptualizations of acceptance and acceptability.
Facing this, scholars of Technology Assessment, STS and related disciplines turn their attention towards conceptualizing trust – arguing the changes of the energy grid as deeply charged with questions of trust and mistrust for all involved stakeholders (Greenberg, 2014; Sumpf, 2019). As informal element external to regulated frameworks, trust can “close a gap between acceptance and acceptability” (Weydner-Volkmann, 2021, p. 53) – or even act as “a conditio sine qua non for the acceptability” of a process aimed at gaining acceptability for a specific socio-technical intervention (Ceglarz et al., 2017, p. 577).
This contribution synthesises these conceptual developments on the basis of an interdisciplinary literature review and discuss them from the perspective of Technology Assessment and STS. Doing so, I aim to extend the conceptual relationship between acceptance, acceptability and trust.
Behnam Taebi
Long abstract:
Many emerging technologies, including transformative and sustainable technologies, bring great benefits but can also create new, significant, and sometimes unprecedented risks. When evaluating those risks. Understandably, there is a strong focus in public policy on social acceptance of such technologies. By solely focusing on social acceptance, however, we could overlook important ethical aspects of such risks, mainly when dealing with transnational and intergenerational risks. In this pitch, I will focus on bridging the conceptual acceptance-acceptability gap. This requires close collaborations between social sciences on the one side and ethics and philosophy on the other.
Cecily Klim (University of New South Wales, Sydney)
Long abstract:
Once understood as a quality inherent to the technology, contraceptive acceptability has evolved in recognition that contraception is a highly relational choice dependent on individual, interpersonal and socio-cultural contexts. Policy makers and contraceptive providers have thus, in principle, adopted a user-centred approach to provision as a move away from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ model. Yet users often refer to modern pharmaceutical contraceptives as a ‘necessary evil’, signalling the need to prevent pregnancy despite the ‘un-acceptability’ of available methods. Indeed, in practice, pharmaceutical companies have made little attempt to increase contraceptive acceptability and research reveals that providers continue to prioritise efficacy over other user-defined ‘acceptable’ qualities, such as non-hormonal and user-controlled.
A new landscape of digital contraceptive technologies, including tracking apps and wearables, has emerged with ‘user acceptability’ front and centre. ‘Femtech’ companies leading this development claim to be user-led and user-centric in meeting multiple user-defined contraceptive priorities. While promising, novel risks regarding efficacy, accountability, and safety have prompted criticism, predominantly from healthcare providers, who argue that these technologies are unacceptable methods of pregnancy prevention.
Here, I present findings from an online document analysis of novel digital contraceptives and qualitative workshops with a diverse group of potential users. The findings traverse different stakeholders - including developers, providers, media outlets, and users - to examine ‘acceptability’ for who, by who, why, in what contexts, and with what effect. Doing so reiterates questions regarding the practical value and use of ‘acceptability’ as a goalpost for contraceptive development and more widely.
Lorena Volpini (CyberEthics Lab.) Carmela Occhipinti (CyberEthics Lab.)
Long abstract:
The integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies into urban services, has amplified the necessity for bolstered cybersecurity measures in contemporary cities. This demand emerges within the broader context of understanding the social implications of smart cities as complex sociotechnical systems. In the specific domain of smart transportation, ensuring safety, security, system performance, infrastructure integrity, and citizen data privacy requires a concerted focus on cybersecurity technology integration and development. The IRIS project is positioned to address these challenges, aiming to enhance cybersecurity in urban transportation.
Unlike other technological domains for sustainability, cybersecurity in smart transport does not face direct opposition, but has social implications (e.g. privacy) which require a nuanced approach to social acceptance. Researchers and practitioners in the IRIS project are proactively addressing social acceptance concerns by developing a Social Acceptance of Technology (SAT) approach. SAT complements traditional user acceptance assessment methods with sociological insights, taking into account factors such as the social disruptiveness of technology, its impact on societal values, and the relevance of trust as a social reality. In such an approach, a multi-layered comprehension of awareness plays an important role in addressing societal perceptions and understanding.
SAT model offers a comprehensive framework for evaluating both social acceptance and social acceptability, depending on the stage of technology development and implementation. It enables the assessment of societal reaction to technological innovation (support, rejection, contentiousness), as well as proactive consideration of potential societal challenges by integrating social perspectives into technology design and implementation strategies.
Jussara Rowland (Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa) Ana Delicado (Instituto de Ciências Sociais ULisboa) Christian Oltra (CIEMAT- Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas) Sergi López-Asensio (CIEMAT) Ana Prades (CIEMAT) Lila Gonçalves (CIEMAT (Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Ambientales y Tecnológicas))
Long abstract:
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a climate change mitigation technology, recognized by the IPCC for its role in contributing to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. In line with this recognition, over recent decades, the European Union (EU) has significantly increased its investment in CCS technology, channelling substantial resources into the advancement of CCS research and development projects, currently at various stages of development. A central element of the EU investment is the recognition of the vital role played by public social acceptance of CCS. This includes understanding varying degrees of acceptance/opposition from different stakeholders, sectors, and citizens, and ensuring that citizens’ views and concerns are incorporated into projects under development. The significance of studying public acceptance of CCS is underscored by its innovative and contentious nature, the lack of public knowledge on the subject, and the substantial requirements for investment, infrastructure, and support from economic and political sectors.
This presentation delves into a comparative analysis of fieldwork on the social acceptance of CCS conducted in two European countries—Portugal and Spain—where geological storage projects are under evaluation as part of the EU-funded "CO2 Geological Pilots in Strategic Territories – PilotSTRATEGY" project (Grant Agreement No. 101022664). The fieldwork employed a mixed-method approach, comprising interviews, surveys, document analysis, and workshops with stakeholders and residents. We examine how factors such as political framework, stage of the project development, public awareness, and geographical considerations differently influenced our methodologies and strategies for examining citizen acceptance of CCS at the local level.