Replication and translation of co-innovation: The influence of institutional context in large international participatory research projects

Stakeholder involvement in research processes is widely seen as essential to enhance the applicability of research. A common conclusion in the extensive body of literature on participatory and transdisciplinary research is the importance of the institutional context for understanding the dynamics and effectiveness of participatory projects. The role of institutional context has become increasingly important in view of large international research projects implementing shared participatory methodologies across countries (for example within Horizon 2020 and within CGIAR programmes), which each have different institutional contexts. Despite the generally accepted importance of the institutional context for understanding the unfolding of participatory and transdisciplinary research projects, surprisingly little research has actually looked into its role in greater detail. This paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by studying how a set of participatory principles and methods in a European project on integrated pest management (denoted as co-innovation in the project under study) was applied by researchers and advisers operating in a single international research project under the institutional conditions of four countries. The principal finding of this study is that, although constraints and enablers of participatory research at the personal level (e.g. researcher identity) were similar across the studied countries, research organisation- and community-based constraints and enablers differed, as well as those at the level of the overall innovation system. The institutions at different levels interact and create country-specific histories and path-dependencies, which lead to different degrees of propensity and preparedness, and hence different starting positions for participatory approaches. Consequently, when participatory research methods and approaches are applied in different contexts following a one-size-fits-all approach they may be less effective if not translated to institutional conditions at different levels. The study suggests that large international participatory research projects make provision in their design for careful selection of project team individuals, the composition of teams, and pay attention to the room for manoeuvre that the project, institute and national contexts provide for participatory research. To support the adjustment of participatory approaches to local institutional conditions, large international projects would benefit from fostering learning spaces that enable reflection on translation to local contexts and are capable of connecting to a wider network of decision makers and influencers that can facilitate institutional change in organisations and innovation systems.     

Auction winning,social dynamics and non-compliance in a payment for ecosystem services scheme in Indonesia

Conservation auctions for payment for ecosystem services (PES) are useful to identify the levels of incentives that will cover the opportunity costs of farmers supplying ecosystem services. Although auctions are increasingly used for allocation in PES schemes, the factors that lead to their successful implementation and eventual environmental outcomes are poorly understood in developing countries. We investigated the socio-economic and institutional contexts that led to smallholders' auction winning and eventual compliance using linear mixed-effects models, and post-auction and post-contract surveys. We employed a case study of a conservation contract preceded by a sealed-bid, multiple round, uniform price auction for watershed services from coffee farmers in Lampung, Indonesia. The auction participants presented low education levels, low asset endowments and small plot sizes. The study obtained evidence that farmers with larger plot areas were more likely to win the contracts, suggesting economies of scale. Most farmers considered the auction a fair self-selection mechanism to allocate contracts where allocation was not influenced by power or social rank. Non-compliance was associated with labor availability constraints, short duration of land ownership and existence of previous conservation applications, suggesting lax of capability to invest in applying conservation agriculture. Final bids were however not good predictors of compliance, among other factors, calling into question the potential of auctions to elicit the actual incentive from the farmers. Ensuring that farmers understand the purposes of auctions for effective contract allocation beyond a mere game and identifying farmers that might encounter difficulties fulfilling the contract could increase the likelihood that such a PES scheme would be successful.     

Comment: Marrying Functional Differentiation and Institutional Economics: Reflections on Steffen Roth’s Article

The Luhmannian idea of functional differentiation offers a novel and radical systems-theoretic framework reinforcing the institutionalist vision of the embeddedness of the economic system in the societal and natural environment. Reflecting on Steffen Roth’s article, I formulate two complementary arguments. The first is that any self-organized complexity can be supported by the installation of a systemic boundary protecting it from the outer environment. The second is that this boundary prevents the complexity of the outer environment from being fully translatable into the intra-systemic complexity. Both arguments potentially inform the institutionalist analysis of the operational and moral problems of the economic function system.     

Collective self-governance in a marine community: expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard

Collective self-governance is gaining attention in the literature for maintaining the quality of key attractions and promoting sustainable tourism. The long-term success of collective self-governance is dependent on both its internal organization and its embeddedness in external state and non-state regulations. This paper presents the marine community concept, consisting of a policy and a user community, as a framework for investigating the internal and external dynamics of collective self-governance and its ability to steer toward sustainable cruise tourism. As methodology, a case study design was chosen which was primarily studied by means of interviews with a spectrum of relevant actors concerning expedition cruise tourism at Svalbard. By applying the marine community to Svalbard expedition cruise tourism governance, we draw the following conclusions: (1) collective self-governance complements governmental regulation through access to knowledge, conflict resolution and rule-compliance based on disclosure, traceability and trust; (2) collective self-governance's increasing role in the policy community alienates the expedition crew from the user community; and (3) informational overflow by co-existence of collective self-governance and state-governance challenges sustainable cruise tourism. Collective self-governance would, therefore, benefit from reflection, especially regarding the role of the user community that functions as an intermediary between state and self-governance regulations.     

Multi-scale integrated analysis of rural Laos: Studying metabolic patterns of land uses across different levels and scales

This paper presents an application of the Multi-Scale Integrated Analysis of Societal and Ecosystem Metabolism (MuSIASEM) approach to the analysis of rural land uses. Using secondary data on farming systems in Laos, we illustrate how the concept of metabolic pattern can be used to establish links between the various indicators of performance of rural systems. To this purpose, we characterize the socioeconomic activities in rural Laos by a series of quantitative indicators defined across: (i) different hierarchical levels of organization described at different scales (i.e. households, rural villages, administrative regions and the whole country) and (ii) different dimensions of analysis, including economic, agronomic, social, biophysical, and ecological analysis. The MuSIASEM approach simultaneously employs two non-equivalent criteria for quantification. The observed rural system is described in terms of an integrated set of flow elements (money, food, energy, water, fertilizer and other materials), which are mapped against two distinct fund elements: (i) a multi-level matrix of human activity (flows being expressed in terms of intensity per hour) and (ii) a multi-level matrix of land uses (flows being expressed as density per hectare). Our case study shows that in this way it is possible to move across different hierarchical levels, scales and dimensions, to arrive at an integrated representation of the metabolic pattern of farming systems.     

Marginal Economy: Growth Strategies for Post-Growth Societies

A sharp problem focus sharpens the problem. Sustainably growing bodies of literature on degrowth are not the key to post-growth scenarios because evocations of the limits of growth reinforce rather than transcend the economic principle, which is in the observation of scarcity. Therefore, I focus on alternative forms of growth rather than alternatives to growth. My form-theoretical analysis of growth dismoralizes growth and disembeds it from the economic medium in which it is preferably drawn. I suggest that the key to a post-growth society is in a regrowth of interest in growth in, so far, neglected non-economic function systems.     

How do stakeholder interactions influence national food security policy in the Caribbean? The case of Saint Lucia

Increasingly, multi-stakeholder processes have been recognized as being necessary to the development of public policies seeking to promote systemic innovation in response to complex and multidimensional challenges, such as household food security, rural development, and environmental change. Saint Lucia, a small island developing state located in the Caribbean, has been grappling with a wide range of agriculture, food and nutrition security challenges with varying degrees of policy success. Recognizing the significance of the challenge, this paper explores the nature of the stakeholder interactions surrounding the development of Saint Lucia’s 2009–2015 National Agricultural Policy and considers some of the implications for food and agriculture-related policy outcomes. Results reveal a general lack of supportive conditions for effective multi-stakeholder processes, including low stakeholder participation levels, conflicting roles of different forms of social capital in the interactions between stakeholders, and missing “boundary” organizations capable of facilitating a transition towards more flexible and adaptive institutions, enhanced knowledge exchange and learning, and greater trust among stakeholders in the policy network. Future avenues for research and development are subsequently identified.     

Can negative interest rates really affect option pricing? Empirical evidence from an explicitly solvable stochastic volatility model

The profound financial crisis generated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the European sovereign debt crisis in 2011 have caused negative values of government bond yields both in the USA and in the EURO area. This paper investigates whether the use of models which allow for negative interest rates can improve option pricing and implied volatility forecasting. This is done with special attention to foreign exchange and index options. To this end, we carried out an empirical analysis on the prices of call and put options on the US S&P 500 index and Eurodollar futures using a generalization of the Heston model in the stochastic interest rate framework. Specifically, the dynamics of the option’s underlying asset is described by two factors: a stochastic variance and a stochastic interest rate. The volatility is not allowed to be negative, but the interest rate is. Explicit formulas for the transition probability density function and moments are derived. These formulas are used to estimate the model parameters efficiently. Three empirical analyses are illustrated. The first two show that the use of models which allow for negative interest rates can efficiently reproduce implied volatility and forecast option prices (i.e. S&P index and foreign exchange options). The last studies how the US three-month government bond yield affects the US S&P 500 index.     

A comparative multidimensional evaluation of conservation agriculture systems: A case study from a Mediterranean area of Southern Italy

To avoid the current paradoxes of the global agro-food system it is necessary to define and implement a viable agricultural sustainable model, combining satisfaction of food needs and land preservation. A possible solution can be found in a holistic production system consistent with a sustainable development model, designed to satisfy diverse “local” economies. The conservation agriculture (CA) could be a part of this model, as it includes a set of best practices available to preserve agrarian soil and its biodiversity. Briefly, we cover the CA background in Europe followed by the evaluation of its impact in terms of private/public interest, using the sustainability’s metric.To test the viability of a model based on CA in “local conditions”, we compare economic performance of different conservation practices (i.e. minimum and no tillage) to that of conventional agriculture in a typical Mediterranean environment – Collina Materana – in Southern Italy (Basilicata region). Our findings suggest that: i) CA can actually be a viable alternative to conventional systems; ii) in Mediterranean agricultural areas CA has yield advantages especially during dry years, when conservation techniques increase water supply to crops; iii) public support is needed to direct farming choices in fact without financial incentives these practices would be not widely accepted and diffused; iv) European policy makers have to recognized the positive benefits of CA and pay them as ecosystem services in the framework of Good Agricultural Environmental Conditions and the present CAP subsidies.