A socio-technical transition perspective on positive tipping points in climate change mitigation: Analysing seven interacting feedback loops in offshore wind and electric vehicles acceleration
本文从社会技术转型视角分析正向临界点，通过英国海上风电和电动汽车案例，揭示技术经济改进与行动者转向的协同反馈循环如何加速低碳技术扩散，对政策制定者和转型研究者有参考价值。
This paper engages with climate mitigation debates on positive tipping points, which attract increasing attention but remain divided between technological and social tipping point approaches. Building on recent attempts to overcome this dichotomy, the paper develops a socio-technical transitions perspective which shows how co-evolutionary interactions between techno-economic improvements and actor reorientations can significantly accelerate diffusion. Mobilising insights from political science, discourse theory, business studies, consumption theory, and innovation studies, we elaborate the Multi-Level Perspective to articulate seven feedback loops in tipping point dynamics. We illustrate and test our co-evolutionary perspective with two case studies, UK offshore wind and electric vehicles. These case studies not only demonstrate the importance of interacting feedback loops, but also show a contrasting sequence in tipping point dynamics, with substantial techno-economic deployment preceding major actor reorientations in offshore wind, while following them in the EV case. The cases also indicate the crucial roles of policymakers in low-carbon tipping point dynamics as well as the importance of policy learning and social, political, and business feedbacks in strengthening and reorienting policy support.