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Measuring societal impacts of research is a challenging task in research evaluation. In this article, we describe several of these challenges with regard to causal inference, time lag, side-effects, operationalization, comparability between disciplines, and availability of required data. We show how different approaches deal with these challenges in evaluation practice and focus on a particular approach named “practice impact” in more detail. This approach includes an improved documentation and is sought to have positive effects on innovation processes and synergies with research and research funding. Moreover, dialogue with different user groups is fostered and serves to make evaluation beyond scientific impact desired, feasible, and efficient.
Governments and energy operators are frequently confronted with opposition to the construction of new energy infrastructure and a lack of public support. This is also true for the planning of new high-voltage overhead transmission lines. In this context, a question of interest for policy makers and energy operators is how residents react when they realize that they may be affected by future transmission lines in close proximity to their homes. This study provides evidence of how local residents respond to the announcement of transmission line corridor route alternatives (TLCRAs). By means of a natural experiment, it estimates the causal effects of spatial proximity to proposed TLCRAs during the planning phase of an energy project. The results reveal that proximity significantly enhanced residents’ risk perceptions with respect to landscape deterioration, property/house value reduction, and damages to human health. We also found that increasing proximity decreased residents’ support for grid expansion and increased the likelihood of performing information seeking behavior and becoming a member of a local citizens’ initiative. Finally, our findings suggest that the relationship between spatial proximity and the dependent variables are appropriately modeled by a distance decay function, showing that effects attenuate with increasing distance from the infrastructure site.
The characteristics of creative educational interventions and the way they are implemented in the field often make their evaluation a challenging task. This article uses an exemplary intervention from a large-scale consumer education program on climate protection to present the design, method, and results of a two-step evaluation procedure which allows evaluators to cope with such a situation. Step 1 aims to answer the question of whether or not an intervention actually has the intended effects. Step 2 then assesses the factors that contribute to those effects. Thus, such a two-step evaluation yields information, not only on which interventions are effective and should therefore be maintained, but also on how they should be designed to achieve maximum effects.