Understanding transition pathways by bridging modelling, transition and practice-based studies: Editorial introduction to the special issue

Abstract

This paper presents an introduction to and overview of the papers in this Special Issue of Technological Forecasting & Social Change on ‘Transition Pathways’ is presented. Each of these papers are an output of the PATHWAYS project (EC FP7-funded, 2013–2017) which looked into ways to integrate alternative approaches for analysing sustainability transitions. Methods to bridge across scenario-modelling, socio-technical transition, and practice-based action research approaches (Turnheim et al. 2015; Geels et al., 2016) were implemented in eight empirical and modelling studies reported here. A variety of approaches to bridging emerged in practice, with differing methodological strategies employed, analysing transitions processes across different sectors, at a range of scales, and separately, comparatively or in a fully integrated way. This paper suggests a framework for understanding different approaches to bridging and shows how policy- and decision-making can be enriched by theoretically- and empirically-informed bridging approaches to transitions analysis.