Electric mobility analysis: Contributions from sociology

This paper discusses ways that the question of social acceptability of eco-innovation can usefully be addressed with sociological methodologies and theoretical frameworks contributions, both in the study and the management of innovation processes. It will first discuss the types of contributions that sociology can provide into innovation management, through a specific conception of users. The particularity of sociological contribution reposes on the vision of the users. It will secondly show how the sociological approach allows to observe and build up a picture of the interactions between the different types of economic actors involved in the innovation process. Our examples are drawn from a program implementing intelligent charging infrastructures for electric vehicles. We show how economic sociology of uses and consumption permits to define user positionality in the innovation network. The understanding of the interactional processes inside our socio-technical space permits us to identify institutional impediments that slow down social acceptability of an eco-innovation such as the electric vehicle. Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.