Sabine Sedlacek

The question of how universities do stimulate regional economic development is mainly inquired in studies focusing on innovation and entrepreneurship. In these studies universities are seen as important actors within regional innovation systems (RIS). Within these RIS universities fulfill besides their training and education (human capital) function a knowledge production and transfer function. Studies on sustainable regional development are additionally focusing more and more on governance issues and the role of different stakeholders within governance networks and their ability to contribute to a more sustainable development at the regional level. Universities are important governance stakeholders, since their administrators and faculty members are eligible partners for regional governments. Here it is mainly their research capacity which is often used for expertise, e.g. to contribute to regional economic development plans. The role of institutions in fostering sustainable development at the regional level gained, especially in Europe, major importance since multi-level governance (MLG) is the number one concept in the European Union regional policy. The focus on institutional cooperation and how this network cooperation leads to a more effective implementation of sustainable development is the subject of several research agendas focusing on governance for sustainable development. There is a lack of knowledge and expertise with respect to the links between certain institutions and the broader society, and hence their ability to foster sustainable regional development. In this regard universities can serve as facilitators between societal and other institutional actors. In order to fill this gap the question of how the sustainable policy implementation process could be supported by universities acting in partnership with other institutional actors will be addressed. We will introduce an analytical framework which would allow us to test hypotheses extracted out of existing theoretical and empirical literature about universities as key actors in advancing
sustainable development. The goal is to filter both factors enhancing sustainable development and obstacles and barriers that are hindering sustainable development.

Universities have a key influence on society in a two-fold manner: they train and educate people and they participate in governance at the national and regional level. This paper focuses on universities and how they function to foster sustainable development. It identifies their actual and potential roles in fulfilling educational, research, governance, and economic development functions, as well as facilitative and mediating functions. A set of seven hypotheses has been derived from the literature and used to develop an analytical framework for considering the three main functions: education, research and governance. The framework distinguishes the individual and the societal educational functions, knowledge creation and knowledge transfer within the research function, and finally the internal and external governance functions. This framework has been applied to a particular case study – the University of Graz, which hosts a Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. The case study analysis allowed a first test of the hypotheses. For this specific case a couple of prerequisites were identified as helping universities act as facilitators for sustainable development at the regional level. A diverse institutional set-up, a committed leadership as well as alliances with particular bridging organizations such as the Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development are only a few of the factors that were found to be facilitative in the case under study.

Discussion on the growth limits and carrying capacity of tourism destinations is not new. Already for decades, carrying capacity has been at the core of sustainable tourism development and aims at offering ‘time/space-specific answers’ for individual localities of various European regions. There are many definitions of this concept and the calculation of a single ‘magic number’ quantifying the carrying capacity is infeasible for reasons such as differences in the thresholds established by visitors and residents, ecological limits, various resources, etc. The discussion about carrying capacity in the context of regional sustainability is linked to human activities impacting a region. This impact has to be within the region's ecological limits and consistent with the region's social and economic constraints in order to ensure adequate supporting functions for the population living in the region. This means that regions should learn as much as possible about the impact of tourism on their destinations in order to develop solid and adequate policies for regional and tourism development. This paper therefore introduces a novel methodology for assessing carrying capacity in tourism destinations, which (a) is specific enough to cater to destination-specific needs, as verified by pilot-testing on various representative case studies, and (b) is general enough to be applicable to any tourism destination throughout European regions. The results emphasize the importance of such a hands-on actionable methodology, while at the same time underlining the importance of dialogue between different stakeholder groups. The value added of the developed methodology is that it simultaneously addresses regional sustainability and tourism development, while acknowledging the fact that there is no single metric or value for carrying capacity. Finally, it is applicable to various types of destinations.

This article deals with the current European discussion on regional and environmental policy issues concerning sustainable regional development with a special focus on Austrian regions. The paradigm of sustainable development is heavily discussed within policy and research. The implementation on the regional level needs more than a theoretical background without having any idea of fostering sustainable strategies. Therefore the here presented paper focuses on real world examples of regional strategies supervised by institutional actors. The analysis of these institutional actors has provided a new perspective of an integrated top-down and bottom-up stimulated sustainable regional development process.

The paper sheds light on the path-dependent development of the
Viennese entrepreneurial ecosystem (EE). By taking into account
temporal dynamics from the 1990s onwards as well as regionspecificities
we are able to demonstrate the evolution of the EE is
not a linear process, but rather the various pillars of the EE may
develop in distinct directions and find themselves in discrete
development stages. Our in-depth analysis supports the
understanding of how various pillars of the EE – especially the
regulatory and finance/funding pillar – interrelate. Furthermore,
the detected cause–effect interlinkages are not balanced, but are
rather shaped by power-constellations and temporal imprinting as
well as other regional specificities, which influence the overall
success of the EE.

According the EU directive on energy efficiency of buildings (Directive 2002/91/EC) the Member States needed to implement four different requirements in order to improve the energy performance of buildings: (1) a general framework for a methodology of calculation of the integrated performance of buildings, (2) setting of minimum standards in new and existing buildings, (3) energy certification of buildings, (4) inspection and assessment of heating and cooling installations. Households and the tertiary sector were identified as the biggest energy users within the European Union (40% of the energy demand within the European Union) with an energy savings potential of 22% until 2010. The member states had three years (2003-2006) to build up relevant measures and systems to implement these requirements. The overall goal is to meet the commitments of the Kyoto Protocol. Regarding the energy efficiency of buildings the link between climate change policy and sustainable development policy is obvious and needs to be taken into account. Hence, climate change strategies need to be harmonized with sustainable development policies. Therefore it seems interesting to raise the question whether new climate change policy instruments to improve energy efficiency in buildings promote urban and regional sustainability. The paper focuses on Austria and tries to assess the recently implemented energy performance certificate of buildings (“Energieausweis”). The analysis is based on two different investigations which will give a first preliminary overview of this recently implemented instrument.

The development of environment-orientated innovation depends crucially on (a) incentives internal to a potential user company of environment-orientated technology and (b) on external stimuli. The decision to innovate, it is frequently claimed, depends mostly on external stimuli in the form of market information or legal requirements. Due to this recognition, two different external incentives co-exist, i.e. market-orientated and policy-orientated incentives. This contribution focuses mainly on policy-orientated stimuli, acknowledging market-specific and internal factors, however, if connected directly to policies. The emphasis in this paper is on policy signals and their perception, with the aim of providing assistance in policy design, taking into account the policy-specific structures of stimuli.
The policy-orientated stimuli discussed for environment-orientated innovation have their origins in two separate policy fields—environmental policy and technology policy. Both policy fields follow different strategies in promoting innovation. In principle both are sending out signals but in different forms to various receivers and at different stages of a particular innovation project. In this contribution these signals and their effects are analysed. A distinction between first mover-orientated and diffusion-orientated signals and their effectiveness is made.
Two principal receivers of such signals exist: technology users and technology providers. The question is which kind of policy stimulus exerts the major influence on which receiver? Another central question is, who receives the signal first? The main thesis is that different types of signals are needed to provide a stimulus for different receivers. Policy signals hence need to be tailor-made to achieve innovation strategies that are carried out by pioneers.
Finally the paper presents different types of innovation relay systems within which the signals are transmitted and lead to specific actions within an innovation project.

This article examines the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in environmental governance systems with a particular emphasis on non-state market-driven governance in the green building industry. Based on an extensive literature review, a conceptual framework of the function of NGOs in environmental governance is developed, focusing on five core aspects – role, power, accountability, legitimacy and acceptance – that define the position of NGOs in a governance system in relation to other stakeholders. The World Green Building Council's (WGBC's) global environmental governance movement has been identified as a dynamic market-driven governance system. Thus, the paper explores the role of regional green building councils (RGBCs) listed in the WGBC's directory within this newly deployed governance system. The results confirm the proposition that RGBCs grow in their governance and third-party role as they progress through the development stages proposed by the WGBC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Access to green space contributes positively to human well-being. One option for inhabitants of urbanized areas is to visit green space within the city borders; another option is to travel beyond them. The former is in favor of ample city arrangements, the latter points in the direction of densely built accumulations. To reveal existing preferences, subjective ratings are contrasted with an objective counterpart: the difference between non-permanent habitable and built-up areas. Equilibrium between natural and urban space receives good ratings.
Prevalence of built-up areas within communities is evaluated much worse compared with a bigger urban overhang in the adjacent surrounding.

Sustainable regional development as a politically requested concept challenges regions within the European Union since the Amsterdam Treaty 1997. A growing body of literature identifies cooperation between stakeholder groups as one of the limiting factors for implementing sustainable regional strategies. This leads to the question, how cooperation within a region could be organised. How can institutions support the implementation process of sustainable development on the regional level? Regional institutions are both supporters of cooperation between regional stakeholders and key players in regional development processes. Their connections strengthen the importance of networks in the sustainable regional development process.

Tourism influences economies, societies, and whole environments. In terms of negative effects, tourist arrival peaks put temporary pressure on destina-tions. Thus, it is important to identify seasonality patterns of homogeneous regions to guide DMOs in the formation of development plans for broader geographical areas. Monthly mobile phone time series tracked from 01/2022 to 12/2023 for Friuli-Venezia-Giulia (FVG) were examined to group munici-palities along seasonality patterns using dynamic time warping (DTW) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) to draw conclusions at the sub-regional level.

This paper deals with the question whether the Green Building Councils that have been founded in many countries of the world serve an economic purpose or are just fashionable at the moment. From a theoretical point of view we will investigate the economic environment of green building initiatives, the roles that developers, investors, policy makers and other actors play in this context. Then, based on existing economic literature, we will identify potential needs for policy initiatives like green building councils. Finally, we will contrast these hypotheses with the results of a survey among green building councils on order to see whether or not they engage in the expected types of activities.

Depopulation is a well-known phenomenon in peripheral rural regions. The most identified problems are based on structural weaknesses in terms of decreasing business activities and a lack of public infrastructure. In such regions population is mainly older causing major changes in social infrastructure. For instance many schools and kindergartens close down for lack of demand, which hinders young families to migrate to such regions. The result is typically a negative cumulative process of loss of population, loss of jobs, loss of infrastructure, further outmigration. It is an enormous challenge for such regions to overcome this vicious circle. Regional identity can be seen as an important factor to overcome such structural weaknesses. The paper will discuss the concept of regional identity in order to define the term and how it is embedded in regional development theory. The empirical analysis is presenting results focusing on regional identity coming out of a qualitative data analysis and a postal survey. We designed a regional identity index, which measures the intensity of personal and social relationships of both in-migrants and out-migrants.

Tourism destinations with a strong exposure to climate change are confronted with the need to initiate energy transitions. As a consequence a broad set of regional stakeholders within and outside the tourism sector are compelled to become active. Therefore collaborative efforts are increasingly suggested in order to initiate and coordinate such transitions.
The paper focuses on these coordination aspects and uses the insights of a tourism destination, the Pinzgau which is on the one hand famous for its winter tourism in Austria and on the other hand part of the national park ‘Hohe Tauern’ where nature preservation is the core goal.

Green Building Councils (GBCs) have been established in many different countries in recent years. This paper discusses the role such organizations can play in the respective construction and real estate industry and under what circumstances a GBC can contribute positively to the development of a “greener” or “more sustainable” stock of buildings. The paper investigates the main informational problem of the industry by looking at the relation between a developer and an investor from an economic point of view. We argue that the investor's uncertainty about the true quality of a building and the corresponding incentive for the developer to cheat may lock them into a prisoners' dilemma trap. The corresponding barriers for a transition toward a “greener” buildings market are analyzed. GBCs are described as institutions of economic governance that can assist the economy in overcoming these problems. They can act as third party institutions in transactions between developers and investors. By certifying the quality of a building, they can reduce the risk for the investor to be cheated by the developer and also increase the incentive to develop good quality buildings for the developer. This task, however, raises some severe management challenges for the GBCs.

The paper presents a transdisciplinary case study which aimed to encourage a vital regional process for building more sustainable structures and regional networks in the future. The case study looks at the industrial city of Steyr which is located in a highly dynamic region in Upper Austria and has to compete with other regional industrial centres and on the global market with internationally acting companies in the automotive sector. For finding local strategies to cope with globally induced pressures and changes several foresight techniques and transdisciplinary approaches have been applied such as interviews, photo elicitation, workshops and scenario building. The transdisciplinary case study is reflected by exploring three major research questions: first, how does transdisciplinarity work in practice, second, what are the benefits and limitations of transdisciplinary research in regional foresight processes and third, how can transdisciplinary research contribute to initiating a long-term process for building sustainable networks and structures in the region. Some answers can be given from the empirical example of Steyr. The case study shows that particularly in regions with a long industrial history and tradition and where existing paradigms cannot easily be overcome, a transdisciplinary procedure provides clear advantages over sole expert solutions. Transdisciplinarity can be the key to get through to the local actors, to develop perfectly fitting strategies for the region and to initiate joint learning and in an ideal situation a long-term change process. New ideas, structures and networks are established which are essential for improving the long-term development of a region.

The idea of university engagement is not new and indeed goes back at least to 1862 in the United States with the land-grant college. It was, however, the image of the university as ‘ivory tower’ that became dominant after WWII in the global competition among universities for the highest rankings in the amount of research funding and prestige. Universities that focused on local and regional concerns were perceived by many as parochial institutions.
Fortunately, that image has been changing, but many universities are still resistant to strong to commitments to regional engagement for a variety of reasons. We use comparative case studies to explore the differential effects of regional economic environment, external stakeholders, regional political interests, university research strengths, and university leadership on how universities are regionally engaged and how effective they are in their engagement activities.

According the EU directive on energy efficiency of buildings (Directive 2002/91/EC) the Member States needed to implement four different requirements in order to improve the energy performance of buildings: (1) a general framework for a methodology of calculation of the integrated performance of buildings, (2) setting of minimum standards in new and existing buildings, (3) energy certification of buildings, (4) inspection and assessment of heating and cooling installations. Households and the tertiary sector were identified as the biggest energy users within the European Union (40% of the energy demand within the European Union) with an energy savings potential of 22% until 2010. The member states had three years (2003-2006) to build up relevant measures and systems to implement these requirements. The overall goal is to meet the commitments of the Kyoto Protocol.
Regarding the energy efficiency of buildings the link between climate change policy and sustainable development policy is obvious and needs to be taken into account. Hence, climate change strategies need to be harmonized with sustainable development policies. Therefore it seems interesting to raise the question whether new climate change policy instruments to improve energy efficiency in buildings promote urban and regional sustainability.
The paper focuses on Austria and tries to assess the recently implemented energy performance certificate of buildings (“Energieausweis”). The analysis is based on two different investigations which will give a first preliminary overview of this recently implemented instrument.

The process of global deforestation calls for urgent attention, particularly in South America where deforestation rates have failed to decline over the past 20 years. The main direct cause of deforestation is land conversion to agriculture, while the underlying drivers include economic growth, population growth and other technological and institutional factors.
As world population is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050, the scientific and policy communities are placing significant emphasis on technological
innovation and agricultural intensification in order to address the food security issue without further impactingon existing forests. In this article we combine data from the FAO and the World Bank for 7
Southern American countries over the period 1970 - 2006 estimate an econometric model which accounts for various determinants of agricultural land expansion and use elasticities to quantify the effect of the different independent variables. In particular we investigate whether, after accounting for various socio-economic factors and corruption control, an increase in agricultural productivity behaves unexpectedly by strengthening the incentives to expand agricultural area, therefore leading to a “Jevons paradox”. Our results show that when corruption control is strong a Jevons paradox begins to emerge
for high levels of agricultural productivity. We also find that agricultural expansion is positively related to the level of service on external debt, agricultural exports and population growth. Finally, the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for agricultural area, suggesting that GDP growth initially
promotes agricultural expansion but ultimately leads to a reduction in agricultural land, is not supported by the data. Instead the effect of per-capita GDP on agricultural land is highly non-linear but ultimately
leads to an increase in agricultural area.

In this paper we address two topical questions: How do the quality of governance and agricultural intensification impact on spatial expansion of agriculture? Which aspects of governance are more likely to ensure that agricultural intensification allows sparing land for nature? Using data from the Food and Agriculture Organization, the World Bank, the World Database on Protected Areas, and the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, we estimate a panel data model for six South American countries and quantify the effects of major determinants of agricultural land expansion, including various dimensions of governance, over the period 1970–2006. The results indicate that the effect of agricultural intensification on agricultural expansion is conditional on the quality and type of governance. When considering conventional aspects of governance, agricultural intensification leads to an expansion of agricultural area when governance scores are high. When looking specifically at environmental aspects of governance, intensification leads to a spatial contraction of agriculture when governance scores are high, signaling a sustainable intensification process.

The generation of spin-off businesses from university scientific research projects is a potentially important way that universities can contribute to building regional knowledge-based economies. But while there is strong potential, the incidence of university spin-offs in most regions of Europe is disappointingly small, even in cases of the presence of highly ranked research universities. The literature on entrepreneurship generally indicates that the process of generating a successful, technology-based startup is complex and difficult, with different obstacles typically occurring at different phases of the start-up process. In order to understand better the reasons why the incidence of university spin-offs has been disappointingly low in the EU, we have conducted an empirical study of the perceived barriers for the region of Vienna, Austria. The results of the study for Vienna indicate that the most important barriers lie in the attitudes and experiences of individual faculty entrepreneurs, on the one hand, and the difficulty of securing funding and attracting investors from various sources, on the other. The results also show there is general agreement in the perception of faculty entrepreneurs, university administrators, and experts about the entrepreneurial scene, about which barriers are most and least important. The empirical results suggest how the innovation ecosystem of Vienna can be strengthened to increase the incidence of university spin-offs. These suggestions include greater coordination and synergy among universities, private funding sources, and government policymakers. We also indicate fruitful directions for additional research.

Working together with practitioners scientists from the fields of social ecology, sociology of health and economics introduce the concept of sustainable development into a pilot hospital. The feasibility study establishes the base for ecological, social and economic improvements within the hospital.