Living labs are understood as collaborative platforms in which actors from research, government and business, and citizens, work together to address complex societal challenges. They are increasingly seen as an instrument to support sustainability transitions, such as transitions to a circular bio-based climate smart society. Living labs can create spaces for joint experimenting and learning by exploring the barriers and possibilities for transition and co-creating appropriate and viable solutions. These high expectations for and increased interest in living labs has sparked a keen interest in methods for assessing the performance of living labs. However, there is not yet an evaluation method or framework that is generally accepted and used. The few existing methods and frameworks mostly focus on the functioning of the living lab itself, and not on its wider impacts. Building on existing approaches and informed by the experiences in three living labs, we developed an assessment framework that enables the capturing of the dynamic role and contribution of living labs. This paper describes the framework and how it was developed. The paper contributes to the development of appropriate ways of assessing the functioning of living labs and the ways in which they contribute to sustainability transitions.

In the process of implementing EU policy, Member States sometimes introduce new policy instruments in cases where this is not obligatory. To better understand this phenomenon, this paper reviews three cases in which new instruments emerged and develops a methodology to trace back the influence of EU Directives on instrument choice. The method is illustrated by a narrative of the emergence of new management planning instruments during the implementation of the EU Habitats Directive in three EU Member States: Finland, Hungary and the Netherlands. Three key features of a policy instrument are defined, namely, its authoritative force, action content and governance design. These are used to measure the contribution of the Habitats Directive compared to other potential explanatory causes for the emergence of the new policy instrument. In all three reviewed countries a nested causal relationship between the Habitats Directive and the introduction of the new policy instrument is identified. Based on the relative contribution of the Habitats Directive to the emergence of the new instrument a distinction is made whether the Directive acted as a cause, catalyst or if conjunction occurred.