Never before has there been a stronger global focus on solving the pressing sustainability challenges of our time, but society’s most well-intended efforts to solve them have not yet achieved the expected gains due to rebound effects. Rebound effects are negative consequences of interventions driven by behavioural and systemic changes that offset approximately 47% of the potential sustainability gains.
While rebound effects are widely acknowledged, fundamental scientific gaps hamper their prevention. REBOUNDLESS aims to develop the reboundless design theory, a paradigm shift in design science that will establish the scientific knowledge for preventing rebound effects by:
• Explaining behavioural rebound mechanisms and socio-technical rebound pathways triggered by efficiency, effectiveness, and sufficiency strategies.
• Modelling and simulating the magnitude of rebound effects arising from design decisions, towards the identification of key leverage points in the early phases of design.
• Enabling the design of rebound-resilient systems by means of reboundless design strategies at the product, product/service-systems and socio-technical systems levels.
The reboundless design theory will provide novel methodologies, simulation models, and strategies for the design of reboundless interventions (i.e. products, product/service-systems, and socio-technical systems that are resilient to rebound effects).
The project focuses on four societal needs (housing, nutrition, mobility, and consumables), which account for three-quarters of the global carbon footprint.
Building on the strong foundation of systems theory, REBOUNDLESS bridges the interdisciplinary gap in the interplay of design for sustainability and rebound effects, qualitative and quantitative models, engineering and social sciences, theory and practice.
