Exploring Citizens’ Adoption of Sustainable Innovations Implemented by Cities and Municipalities in Germany

Cindy Schaefer (), Aida Stelter, Marie Godefroid and Björn Niehaves
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Cindy Schaefer: Chair for Information Systems, Faculty III, University of Siegen, 57072 Siegen, Germany
Aida Stelter: Chair for Information Systems, Faculty III, University of Siegen, 57072 Siegen, Germany
Marie Godefroid: Chair for Information Systems, Faculty III, University of Siegen, 57072 Siegen, Germany
Björn Niehaves: Digital Public, University of Bremen, 28359 Bremen, Germany

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 19, 1-20

Abstract: Sustainable innovations, such as sustainable products or services, are becoming increasingly relevant for society and thrive on societies’ knowledge and usage. But this is where many cities/municipalities are experiencing disharmony: citizens often do not know that these sustainable innovations exist and, therefore, do not use them. Our study starts at this point: To address this disharmony in Germany, the government has established the German Sustainability Award, which honors cities/municipalities with outstanding sustainable innovations. We qualitatively surveyed the citizens and administrations of these cities about their knowledge and use in their city/municipality (using eight categories) under the theoretical lens of Rogers’ (1960/2003) Diffusion of Innovation Theory (DOI). In 29 interviews in six cities/municipalities, we were able to match sustainable innovations based on DOI. In particular, we determined that few sustainable innovations were only found in specific categories (such as economy (EC)), while others existed in all (such as climate and environment (CE) or education (ED)), and, e.g., city/municipality’s size did not matter at all.

Keywords: diffusion of innovation theory (DOI); innovations; municipalities; sustainable development goals (SDG); citizens view (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
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