S1-WAG: Safety Perceptions of New Technologies (SPOT) – making social and natural sciences meet

Description

Many new technologies’ introductions have been hindered by societal negativity regarding their development, application and commercialisation. Whilst considerable research activity has been directed towards understanding the underlying determinants of societal acceptance emerging technologies, this has been done on a case by case basis. Hence there is a need to harmonise existing knowledge and identify the optimal methodological approaches to understand and predict technology acceptance.

The aim of the research project is to systematically review existing methodological approaches to understanding consumer/citizen responses to emerging technologies (for example, nanotechnology) and to identify gaps in knowledge/principles of best practice.

To answer the central question, the following sub-objectives will be addressed:

The above sub-objectives will help build a generalised overview of successes and failures of integrating social science aspects into natural science technology assessments as well as an actual description of the social factors relevant to nanotechnology. This will in turn lead to the fulfilment of the final sub-objective:

– To provide indications how to guide (nano)technology management and stakeholder dialogue strategies for the development and application of new technologies more broadly