Living labs from a governance perspective: An analysis of the way living labs transform the environmental governance system

Current governance systems are increasingly confronted with environmental challenges that exceed their capacities. To tackle this deficit, one of the recently developed alternative governance arrangements is the living lab. In living labs, experiments with innovations are conducted in cocreation with actors. These innovations can be in the form of products, or innovative instruments and strategies with regard to the governance system in which they find themselves. However, the relation between the living lab concept and the governance system is underexamined. In this paper, we study how living labs function as explorative and experimental spaces for the governance system by using governance capacities. Longitudinal participative action research has been conducted in a Dutch living lab around freshwater supply for agriculture. We found three ways in which living labs contribute to the governance system: (1) the action-orientation of living labs results in space for real-life experimentation; (2) a living lab results in renewed interactions and reciprocity between actors in the governance system; and (3) a living lab improves the adaptive capacity of the governance system by its emergent processes and fluid structures.