气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

CCPortal

DOI	10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2013.02.007
	Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field
	Seyfang G.; Longhurst N.
发表日期	2013
ISSN	0959-3780
卷号	23 期号:5
英文摘要	The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental 'niches'; but recent research on 'grassroots innovations' argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation - the international field of community currencies - which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external 'landscape' pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.
英文关键词	Community currencies; Complementary currencies; Grassroots innovations; Innovation diffusion; Innovation niches; Social innovation
学科领域	civil society; data acquisition; education; finance; grassroots level; innovation; niche; research; standardization; sustainability
语种	英语
scopus关键词	civil society; data acquisition; education; finance; grassroots level; innovation; niche; research; standardization; sustainability
来源期刊	Global Environmental Change
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/117920
作者单位	3S Science, Society and Sustainability Research Group, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, NR4 7TJ, United Kingdom
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Seyfang G.,Longhurst N.. Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field[J],2013,23(5).
APA	Seyfang G.,&Longhurst N..(2013).Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field.Global Environmental Change,23(5).
MLA	Seyfang G.,et al."Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field".Global Environmental Change 23.5(2013).