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Making the Impacts of Repair Cafés, Food Sharing, and Co. visible Concept for Monitoring Social Innovations for Sustainable Consumption

A sustainable transformation of production and consumption patterns is urgently required to halt the ongoing transgression of planetary boundaries and ensure a liveable planet for current and future generations. Socially innovative approaches to enhancing environmental and social sustainability in consumption and production, particularly in Global North countries, are of paramount importance, as technological innovations alone do not possess the requisite potential for transformative change.

To comprehensively understand and actively promote social innovations for sustainable consumption, a robust knowledge base is essential. Regular monitoring of these innovations can serve to assess their impacts and dissemination, identify the needs of the involved actors and initiatives and, through that, build this knowledge base. To this end, a framework for such regular monitoring has been developed within the BMBF-funded project Impact assessment and diffusion potentials of social innovations for sustainable consumption (FoSInKo)”. This report presents conceptual considerations, the approach to developing the monitoring framework, and the framework itself.

The monitoring framework is intended to serve as a starting point to establish a permanent and regular monitoring of social innovations for sustainable consumption in the future. In the process of developing the concept, the primary focus on creating an indicator system for three impact dimensions – ecological, economic, and social – and designing a suitable instrument for the assessment of the diffusion of social innovations. Accordingly, the framework provides:

  • A well-founded proposal for a methodical approach, 
  • A tested and validated survey framework for assessing dissemination and social impacts, 
  • A comprehensive set of indicators for evaluating effects across ecological, economic and social dimensions.  

This discussion paper provides a detailed overview of the conceptual considerations as well as the survey instrument. It is intended for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who wish to delve deeper into the topic.