“In particular, we draw on the concept of ‘splintered regimes’ (van Welie et al., 2018) to introduce the notion of ‘niche splintering’ as a multidimensional view of technology speciation, which we link to anchoring and diffusion.”
“Above we have shown that while the literature on niche diffusion and anchoring provides a useful multidimensional perspective on the societal embedding of technologies, existing studies mainly consider anchoring in one sector at a time (Bakker et al., 2015; Raven, 2007), resulting in limited insights into challenges related to anchoring in multiple sectors simultaneously and to speciation dynamics that seem likely to occur.
We have also shown that, while the literature on multi-purpose technology and speciation reveals important aspects of diffusion and anchoring in multiple different sectors, existing studies mainly consider diffusion and speciation in one sector at the time and they predominantly focus on technological aspects and ignore institutional and actor anchoring (exemptions that foreground agency include Cattani, 2006; Garnsey et al., 2008).
We suggest bringing together these insights under the concept of niche splintering to gain a better understanding of anchoring and diffusion processes for multi-purpose technologies. Splintering of socio-technical configurations (regimes and niches) happens when their performance attributes cannot meet the (changing) service characteristics of users. For example, in Nairobi’s sanitation sector, major differences among users along the lines of income levels and ethnicity resulted in differentiated service characteristics that gradually led to the splintering of the regime into multiple sub-regimes, such as sewer-based public sanitation, on-site sanitation, and container-based and coping regimes that each involved distinct service providers, user groups, in stituations, and technologies (van Welie et al., 2018).
At the niche level, splintering can happen when the niche technology is exposed to unfamiliar service characteristics of the new user sectors. Splintering is thus akin to speciation, but it is inherently multidimensional because splintering into new and more niches not only involves new technology (with novel operational principles) but also splits in actor networks and in institutions.
Finstad and Andersen (2023) Multi-sector technology diffusion in urgent net-zero transitions: Niche
splintering in carbon capture technology, Technological Forecasting & Social Change 194, 122696
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