The development of sustainable mobility not only requires the development and use of new transport technologies but also necessitates changes in user practices, legislation and policy, infrastructure, networks, and institutions. Such developments, with changes on many dimensions, are called transitions in contrast with more common incremental paths of innovation. Scenarios are an instrument for exploring future developments and can help to inform strategic decisions (by policymakers as well as industry) in situations of uncertainty. Existing scenario methods, however, are less suited to explore transitions since they pay too little attention to the complex interaction between technical and societal developments as well as neglect interactions between different stakeholders that may lead to new directions for development. In this paper we present a new scenario method that explicitly pays attention to the interrelation between technical and societal factors in innovation processes (hence the name 'socio-technical' scenario- STSc). This methodology builds upon recent insights in the dynamics of innovation processes, more specifically on the 'multilevel transition theory'. The core of this theory is that it pays attention to three 'levels' and the interactions between them, notably the macro level of the socio-technical landscape, the meso level of a socio-technical regime and the micro-Ievel of technological niches. The STSc method explores possible developments on all these levels and their interaction to give a 'richer' picture of possible paths towards sustainability. The method will be illustrated by a concrete example of such a transition path for the traffic and transport domain. It will end with an assessment of the usefulness of the method as an instrument to co-ordinate activities of different stakeholders (including industry, governments, travellers and 'third parties') towards sustainable mobility. (Author/publisher)
Abstract