Focus groups on Swedish leadership, niche markets and low carbon business models
Last week marked the start of focus group interviews that contribute to Mistra Carbon Exit Work Package 3. Feeding particularly into the project Focus groups on Swedish leadership, niche markets and low carbon business models, the group interviews aim to examine how sustainable societies and climate leadership are made sense of by key actors. More precisely the focus is to elaborate how different actors, including Swedish industry representatives, and representatives of Swedish environment politics and administration, perceive efforts towards achieving Sweden’s target of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
After conducting a pilot group interview, the first focus group interview was held with Swedish industry representatives on Thursday, 20th September. The interview provided interesting insights on the participant’s perceptions on the topic and makes the project’s researchers look forward to the interviews to come.
- We are excited to find out how perceptions may differ (or not) within and between the focus groups and to what extent the interview format facilitates the interview flow and discussion, says Victoria Wibeck, professor of Environmental Change at Linköping University and project leader of the focus group study.
Research assistant Marianne Kropf explains that the focus group interviews make use of ICT-based, interactive exercises that facilitate participants’ discussions: A brainstorming exercise helped to identify and group the participants’ ideas connected to a sustainable future and leadership for net zero emissions. An interactive web-tool was used to answer and compare the answers to questions used in the International Negotiations Study (INS) study. Why did the participants choose their respective answer? To what extent do their answers differ to the INS results, and what are the focus group participants’ thoughts about these differences?
The focus group interviews will be continuously conducted in the Norrköping Decision Arena during the coming months. The material collection and analysis will happen simultaneously.
