Assessment of the societal impact of research and innovation in the agri-food sector
Research value, research relevance, research quality, and research impact have been widely tackled by various disciplines, such as health, engineering, management, and sustainability. How research and innovation are being produced, evaluated, communicated, and disseminated is an interchangeable ques...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | CBUC, CESCA |
| Repositorio: | TDR. Tesis Doctorales en Red |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:www.tdx.cat:10803/674661 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10803/674661 https://dx.doi.org/10.5821/dissertation-2117-369388 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Research and innovation Impact assessment Stakeholders Societal impact Sustainability performance Knowledge and innovation transfer Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Enginyeria agroalimentària 624 |
| Sumario: | Research value, research relevance, research quality, and research impact have been widely tackled by various disciplines, such as health, engineering, management, and sustainability. How research and innovation are being produced, evaluated, communicated, and disseminated is an interchangeable question among scholars, practitioners, and policy makers. Focusing on the agri-food sector, this doctoral thesis attempts to examine the societal impact of research and innovation, providing a methodological framework and a set of indicators to measure sustainability performance and knowledge transfer. It compromises mixed method techniques both qualitative and quantitative research designs to identify sustainability impact and to discuss its implication to various stakeholders. This thesis fulfills two main research gaps in the literature: first, to shift from “evaluating academic impact” to “evaluating sustainability impact” generated by research and innovation programs; and second, to propose quantifiable proxies of the societal impact of research, while taking into account stakeholders´ perspectives. The structure of this doctoral thesis consists of the following chapters: Chapters 1 and 5 constitute the Introduction and Conclusion of the dissertation; Chapters 2, 3, and 4 represent the three research studies conducted during the doctoral program. Chapter 2 combines two methodological approaches, ASIRPA framework and Impact Oriented Monitoring (IOM) model. The outcome of Chapter 2 is an evaluative tool of research and innovation analyzing its impacts to the society and to the ecosystem. Based on multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) system, Chapter 3 relies on an empirical design, following outranking methodology (ELECTRE III). It provides comprehensive ranking matrices of four research cases studies. The main contribution of this chapter is to triangulate stakeholders´ evaluation in the Spanish agri-food sector based on six standardized pillars of sustainability: economic, socio-territorial, health, environmental, political impacts and capacity building. Last but not least, Chapter 4 investigates the association between knowledge and innovation transfer and examines its effect on sustainability impacts. Following knowledge-based theory, the outcome of this chapter articulates how science can have a dual output as both scientific and societal. Finally, to elaborate on the overall implication of this doctoral thesis, it provides insights for decision making and monitoring research uptake and policy design in the agri-food sector. Its practical inference indicates that research and innovation can reveal a significant influence on sustainability performance. |
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