How is social psychology currently used in the sociotechnical sustainability transitions literature?

Abstract

This chapter begins by showing that in the sociotechnical sustainability transitions literature to date, social phenomena have mostly been examined at the level of collective forms of action. The chapter documents and discusses the ways in which the psychology of agents or actors has been described and theorised within the sociotechnical transitions literature, both implicitly and explicitly. We show that while actor motivation and behaviour are often implicitly referred to, these are rarely theorised explicitly using psychological concepts. While sociologists of science and technology have long understood technological diffusion and adoption as processes of social embedding, the psychological processes involved have received relatively little attention in the sociotechnical transitions literature. Reasons for the limited use of individual-level, psychological constructs are discussed.