COVID-19 vs. stakeholder engagement: the impact of coronavirus containment measures on stakeholder involvement in European energy research projects

Abstract

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected societies and economies around the world, and the scientific community is no exception. Whereas the importance of stakeholder engagement in research has grown quickly the consequences of the pandemic on this has so far not been empirically studied. In this paper, we investigate the effects of the COVID-19 crisis on European energy research, in particular the stakeholder work, during the first wave of the coronavirus in spring and summer 2020. We pose the research questions: (i) How much of a problem are the coronavirus containment measures for stakeholder engagement? (ii) How have researchers coped with the situation, and (iii) How do they evaluate alternative stakeholder activities implemented? We conducted an online survey among European energy research projects with stakeholder engagement between June and August 2020. We found that only one of six engagement activities could be implemented as planned, whereas almost half were cancelled or delayed. The most common coping strategies were changing involvement formats – mainly to webinars or online workshops – or postponement. Whereas respondents are largely satisfied with one-to-one and unidirectional online formats, such as webinars, online interviews, and online surveys, they see interactive group activities as less suitable for online engagement. Most respondents plan to continue using online formats to complement, but not to replace, physical meetings in future research. All long-term effects remain to be seen, but given the postponement of many stakeholder involvement activities, many projects may face problems at later stages of their realisation. These findings suggest that the pandemic may have catalysed a rapid introduction of specific online formats in academic stakeholder interaction processes.

Planning, implementing, and evaluating an online group‐model‐building workshop during the COVID‐19 pandemic: celebrating successes and learning from shortcomings

“…Along with the innumerable disruptions ushered in by COVID‐19 pandemic, face‐to‐face SD GMB workshops were generally rendered impractical (Wilkerson et al ., 2020 ). For example, stakeholders became harder to reach because of public health mandates and general fear of COVID‐19 transmission (Süsser et al ., 2021 ). Accordingly, researchers shifted to online facilitation of SD GMB workshops (Wilkerson et al ., 2020 ).…”

Pandemic-era Participation in Public Lands Governance: Lessons From the USDA Forest Service

“…Influence is dependent upon access and standing, and the pandemic has caused shifts in how engagement is structured to support these across a number of institutions and countries (e.g., Mouter et al, 2021;Susser et al, 2021). Attempts to replicate the same activities virtually as are held in person may require additional considerations for digital engagement (for those with internet access), and perhaps lessons from the marketing literature can be used to structure engagement experiences according to the ways individuals prefer to engage with online content instead of (or in addition to) designing involvement based upon best practices in the participation literature.…”

“…Even the best efforts, however, may not be able to overcome participation access issues without equitable access to digital resources. For example, 25% of stakeholders were unable to be reached digitally for inclusion in energy research engagement processes (Susser et al, 2021). While Senecah noted in 2004 that, "Access is easy to provide.…”