University Living Labs for Sustainability: Governance, Pedagogy, and Global North-South Patterns

This scoping review examines how 72 higher education institutions (HEIs) operationalize sustainability through living labs (LLs), synthesizing evidence from 89 studies published between 2010 and 2025. Using Arksey and O’Malley’s (2005) framework, the review maps how LLs coordinate governance, pedagogy, operational experimentation, and stakeholder engagement, comparing 63 Global North (GN) and 26 Global South (GS) cases. GN LLs feature formalized governance and resource-intensive infrastructures linking curriculum, operations, and data-driven experimentation. GS LLs operate under resource constraints but exhibit strong community embedding, participatory co-production, and socio-ecological responsiveness. Institutionalization depends on hybrid configurations where bottom-up experimentation aligns with top-down authority. Observed governance, pedagogical, technological, and engagement practices can be interpreted through organizational learning theory (Argyris & Schön, 1997) and socio-technical transitions theory (Geels, 2002), and analyzed using the Living Lab Framework for Sustainability in Higher Education (Leal Filho et al., 2023), which frames LLs as multi-dimensional infrastructures enabling co-evolution of practices, infrastructures, and social dynamics. LLs function as context-contingent institutional infrastructures shaped by regional priorities, institutional logics, and relational dynamics. These findings provide a comparative and empirically grounded explanation of how universities design and sustain LLs to support whole-of-institution sustainability transitions.