Promising degrees of stakeholder interaction in research for sustainable development

Stakeholder interactions are increasingly viewed as an important element of research for sustainable development. But to what extent, how, and for which goals should stakeholders be involved? In this article, we explore what degrees of stakeholder interaction show the most promise in research for sustainable development. For this purpose, we examine 16 research projects from the transdisciplinary research programme NRP 61 on sustainable water management in Switzerland. The results suggest that various degrees of stakeholder interaction can be beneficial depending on each project’s intended contribution to sustainability, the form of knowledge desired, how contested the issues are, the level of actor diversity, actors’ interests, and existing collaborations between actors. We argue that systematic reflection about these six criteria can enable tailoring stakeholder interaction processes according specific project goals and context conditions.