The project "SUSTECH" deals with questions like "Why are existing products that would support sustainable development not being used?" and "In which way and why do diffusion patterns of sustainable technologies differ from those of "normal" technologies?"

The project was launched in June 2008, is scheduled for 6 months and funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the framework of "socio-ecological research".

Project objectives are:

• Preparation of an explorative survey on the current knowledge about diffusion processes of sustainable technologies, identifying supporting and impeding factors and the role of framework conditions.
• Formulation of programmatic research questions on the basis of the identified knowledge gaps and research deficits. These questions can then be used as draft for a research agenda for the BMBF and corresponding calls for proposal.

To this end, a systematic search for literature will be performed on the Internet, looking for German and English publications dealing with diffusion processes of sustainable technologies. Of interest are empirical studies (e.g. case studies) as well as theoretical studies. This will be followed by the detailed analysis of the content of the collected research literature.