The scientific case for looking beyond growth rests on a body of empirical work that has steadily eroded the dominant policy orthodoxy of green growth. Green growth aims to minimize environmental damage while GDP continues to expand, and it remains the preferred response of most governments and international institutions. But the evidence that economies can decouple growth from environmental pressure at the required pace is thin. Research published in The Lancet Planetary Health found that absolute global decoupling of GDP from environmental pressures has not occurred at anything like the speed needed to meet the Paris climate targets. A separate survey of more than 3,000 researchers, co-authored by Suter, revealed strong doubts among experts that global GDP decoupling is compatible with keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius. Against this backdrop, the authors argue, research must explore how human needs can be fulfilled independently of economic expansion and within planetary boundaries.

The core of their argument is that sustainability research must move beyond explaining why a post-growth transition is necessary and start helping people envision what life in such a world could look and feel like. Consider healthcare. How might a post-growth health system prioritize prevention, community-based care, and equitable access while reducing environmental pressures? The authors acknowledge the complex interdependencies and tensions between sectors, but they insist that sector-specific visions are a crucial first step for revealing how post-growth principles could be realized in everyday practices. Concrete sectoral pictures, they argue, can identify the institutional, cultural, and material transitions required to secure a high quality of life with lower ecological footprints. At the same time, they caution that sectoral boundaries are themselves socially and historically constructed, shaped in part by nation-state structures with roots in colonial modernity, and must remain open to contestation so that a sectoral lens complements rather than obscures the systemic relations of power a transformation must ultimately address.

Why is imagination so hard? The authors draw on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu and social practice theory to explain. Past experiences and present social positions shape how people think and act, embedding taken-for-granted habits so deeply that alternatives become literally unthinkable. Yet this does not mean social structures never change. According to Bourdieusian theory, it is precisely in times of crisis that things normally taken for granted come into question. The current polycrisis of ecological overshoot, rising inequality, declining population growth, and slowing global GDP is therefore not only a threat but an opening. To harness it, the authors argue, people should learn about the roots of the crisis and its impacts on their own lives, and citizens should be involved early in the visioning process so that the resulting futures reflect real experiences and hopes rather than technocratic blueprints.

Narratives of preferred futures are powerful catalysts for change, and the scientific literature backs this up. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that such narratives can serve as foundations for social transformation. Shared and attractive visions can build hope, inspire action, and align environmental goals with widely held values such as health, social cohesion, and security. Everyday habits make certain behaviors and values seem normal, but crisis moments offer a chance to challenge and revise them. Without concrete visions, however, the post-growth concept risks remaining abstract and difficult to act upon for policymakers and citizens alike. In this sense, the authors write, sectoral post-growth visions have the potential to bridge scientific insight, public engagement, and policy development, connecting the outputs of systems models to the lived texture of daily life.

To make the approach tangible, the article develops healthcare in high-income countries as a worked example, and the numbers are striking. The sector faces a dual challenge: structural dependence on economic growth and the need to operate within ecological limits. Aging populations, rising health burdens, and expectations of improved outcomes drive ever-increasing demand, while financial incentives push providers and related industries to continually expand the number of patients and treatments in pursuit of profit. Up to 30 percent of care is estimated to be low-value or even harmful, the product of overdiagnosis, overtreatment, and excessive pharmaceutical use. Routine check-ups, frequent screenings, immediate medication, and reliance on specialist interventions reflect a cultural belief that more care equals better care. Current incentives and norms, the authors argue, lock both patients and providers into cycles of overutilization and medicalization.

The environmental footprint of healthcare compounds the problem. The sector accounts for approximately 5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and pharmaceutical pollution and the promotion of antibiotic resistance through contamination of natural ecosystems pose further serious risks to humans and the environment. A post-growth healthcare system, by contrast, would emphasize preventative, relational, community-based care and recognize the essential role of informal caregivers and local networks. Localization is a central tenet of post-growth thinking, but the authors are careful to note that many pharmaceuticals rely on globally integrated supply chains that cannot be fully decentralized. The realistic goal is to strengthen local resilience where possible while maintaining essential global interconnections. Ownership models could shift from profit-driven to cooperative, public, or not-for-profit forms, aligning service provision with collective well-being rather than economic expansion.

Achieving such a vision requires questioning normalized daily practices and confronting entrenched assumptions about growth, technology, and progress, and the authors see the current crisis in healthcare as a potential catalyst for exactly this kind of value transformation. They call for interdisciplinary collaboration among economists, health researchers, and behavioral scientists, alongside transdisciplinary engagement with public institutions, the private sector, civil society, and citizens. Navigating conflicting interests and trade-offs, they stress, is critical to co-creating grounded, context-specific visions rather than imposing one-size-fits-all designs. The article also assigns researchers three distinct roles in the visioning process: as solution finders for growth dependencies, as orchestrators who structure the process and engage actors beyond academia, including citizens, organizations, artists, and the media, and as providers of scientific facts and future scenarios, such as information on ecological footprint levels that remain within sustainable limits.

Understanding any sector, the authors emphasize, requires more than technical knowledge of how it functions; it demands a grasp of the social structures that sustain it. That includes identifying what people value, how those values are shaped, and who benefits from maintaining the status quo. Sector-specific norms and assumptions, such as what counts as success, what is seen as necessary, and what is perceived as progress, must be made explicit and open to contestation. It is equally crucial to ask who holds institutional power and which vested interests hinder transition, since each sector has its own constellation of dominant actors, whether corporations, professional bodies, regulatory agencies, or academic institutions, that shape how change is resisted or enabled. To ensure quality, the authors propose that resulting visions be visionary, sustainable, systemic, coherent, plausible, tangible, relevant, nuanced, and motivating, criteria drawn from established sustainability science frameworks.

Finally, the authors insist that for post-growth visions to bring about social change, they must reach people far outside academia. Communication is therefore not an afterthought but a core part of the research agenda. They point to arts, storytelling, and participatory media as underexplored channels with great potential to shape cultural narratives and open space for alternative futures. Future visions, they suggest, could be conveyed through television series, fictional books, or theatrical productions, modes of communication that enable wider public engagement and dialogue across social groups. The bet underlying the whole argument is that when people can see, feel, and even be entertained by a concrete picture of a flourishing life within planetary limits, post-growth stops being an academic provocation and becomes a political possibility. The article, published open access on August 24, 2026, is intended as an invitation to researchers across disciplines to begin that imaginative work, sector by sector.

Subject of Research: Sector-specific visioning for post-growth futures, illustrated through healthcare in high-income countries

Article Title: Make post-growth futures tangible with a sectoral perspective

Article References: Suter, M., Tsuchibuchi, Y., & Koch, M. (2026). Make post-growth futures tangible with a sectoral perspective. PLOS Sustainability and Transformation, 5(8), e0000281. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pstr.0000281

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pstr.0000281

Keywords: post-growth, degrowth, sustainability, healthcare, green growth, decoupling, planetary boundaries, GDP, climate change, social transformation, participatory visioning, PLOS Sustainability and Transformation

The study, published in Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, was led by Fiona Paulus of the University of Cologne together with colleagues from Leipzig University, the University of Bergen, and the University of Cologne. The team combined rare aircraft observations from the HALO–(AC)³ campaign of March 2022 with high-resolution cloud-resolving simulations to follow a single parcel of Arctic air for two full days as it travelled from the sea ice north of the Fram Strait southward over open water. Their central finding is striking: strong mesoscale subsidence, the gentle sinking of air over scales of tens to hundreds of kilometres, suppresses boundary-layer growth, delays and weakens cloud glaciation, limits precipitation, and shortens cloud lifetimes, while weak subsidence allows clouds to deepen, decouple from the surface, and glaciate earlier.

Marine cold air outbreaks, or MCAOs, are a cornerstone of the Arctic climate system. As cold, dry polar air crosses the sea ice edge, the intense temperature contrast with the warmer ocean generates vigorous turbulent mixing that rapidly deepens the atmospheric boundary layer. Clouds first appear as long, parallel roll structures known as cloud streets, then break up into deeper, broken cloud fields as the air continues to warm and moisten. These evolving clouds modulate the exchange of radiation between the surface and space, determine how much precipitation falls, and even increase surface wind speeds. Through this ocean–atmosphere coupling, MCAOs influence atmospheric and oceanic circulations and contribute to the heat and moisture exchange between the Arctic and the mid-latitudes, linking them to the feedback mechanisms behind Arctic amplification.

Yet a key piece of the puzzle has been missing. The role of mesoscale vertical motion, particularly subsidence, in shaping these transformations has remained poorly understood, largely because measuring it at high latitudes is extraordinarily difficult. Small errors in horizontal wind gradients translate into large uncertainties when vertical motion is inferred from mass conservation. The most robust technique applies a regression analysis to dropsondes, small instrument packages dropped from aircraft that profile temperature, humidity, and wind as they descend. This method was pioneered during two aircraft campaigns in the subtropical trades, and the HALO–(AC)³ campaign became the first to apply it systematically to an Arctic cold air outbreak, producing the first robust high-latitude subsidence dataset of its kind.

During the campaign, the German research aircraft HALO flew two consecutive research flights on 29 and 30 March 2022, tracking a weak but well-defined MCAO with an outbreak index of four. At four locations along the predicted trajectory of the air mass, HALO released dropsondes in circular patterns with a diameter of 150 kilometres. The initial circle, centred at 84.4 degrees north over sea ice, was followed by three further circles on the second day as the air mass moved south over the marginal ice zone and open ocean. A regression algorithm applied to each circle yielded vertical profiles of divergence and subsidence, along with advective tendencies of temperature, humidity, and wind. The derived subsidence rates reached mean values of about −0.74 and −0.60 centimetres per second in the lowest three kilometres at the initial and second circles respectively, with uncertainties below 0.025 centimetres per second.

These observations formed the backbone of a quasi-Lagrangian large-eddy simulation using the Dutch Atmospheric Large-Eddy Simulation model, DALES, equipped with a double-moment microphysics scheme that predicts the mass and number of five hydrometeor classes: cloud water, cloud ice, rain, snow, and graupel. The simulation domain spanned 12.8 by 12.8 kilometres at 50-metre horizontal resolution, and the model was initialised with dropsonde profiles from the far north, with surface conditions prescribed from airborne thermal-infrared imagery and large-scale forcings interpolated along the trajectory. Over a 45-hour simulation, the control run reproduced the observed boundary-layer height within roughly 150 metres, captured the integrated water vapour to within a few tenths of a kilogram per square metre, and tracked the liquid water path within the spread of the radiometer observations, despite a slight cold and dry bias of two to three kelvin near the surface.

With this validated baseline in place, the team ran four sensitivity experiments in which the observed subsidence was scaled by factors of zero, 0.1, 0.5, and 2.0, spanning rates from −0.12 to roughly −2.3 centimetres per second. The results exposed a systematic chain of consequences. Without subsidence, the boundary layer deepened fastest, approaching the theoretical parabolic growth rate, and produced the largest cloud water and ice contents, with liquid water paths peaking at 173 grams per square metre and precipitation rates reaching 60 millimetres per hour. Under doubled subsidence, the boundary layer never exceeded one kilometre, clouds remained thin and shallow, and precipitation was confined to a brief early phase at a maximum of only 2.1 millimetres per hour. Graupel, the heavily rimed ice that forms in vigorous convective updrafts, appeared in every experiment except the strongest-subsidence case.

The most consequential insight concerns decoupling, the process by which the cloud-topped boundary layer splits into a surface-influenced lower layer and a cloud-bearing upper layer that no longer exchange heat and moisture efficiently. The simulations revealed that decoupling first announces itself in the buoyancy flux: a layer of negative buoyancy flux develops below cloud base, disrupting the boundary layer’s single overturning circulation. This buoyancy-based decoupling, previously documented in the warm subtropics but not before identified during Arctic cold air outbreaks, always preceded a characteristic sequence of events: a peak in cloud liquid water, then a peak in graupel, then a peak in surface precipitation, and finally full thermodynamic decoupling diagnosed from jumps in humidity and temperature across the sub-cloud layer. The entire sequence typically spanned about one degree of latitude and shifted systematically southward as subsidence strengthened.

This sequence explains a familiar but previously unexplained feature of cold air outbreaks: the typical evolution of the cloud liquid water path, which rises to a maximum and then collapses as ice processes take over. Once the boundary layer decouples, shallow cumulus clouds rise from below into the capping mixed-phase layer, and the increased liquid water availability promotes depositional ice growth through the Wegener–Bergeron–Findeisen process before riming produces graupel. The resulting precipitation depletes the cloud’s liquid reservoir, while evaporation and sublimation beneath cloud base cool and moisten the sub-cloud layer, further stabilising it and suppressing vertical mixing. Subsidence, the authors conclude, does not directly dictate the microphysics; rather, it controls the depth and structure of the boundary layer in which glaciation and decoupling unfold, thereby regulating the timing of the entire transition.

The implications reach well beyond a single case study. Cloud transitions during cold air outbreaks determine how much solar and thermal radiation reaches and leaves the Arctic surface, how much moisture is exported to lower latitudes, and how models should represent the shift from organised roll convection to open cellular convection. The authors caution that their results rest on one weak outbreak, that aerosol concentrations were held fixed, and that secondary ice production was limited to a single mechanism, so extending the analysis to stronger events and varying aerosol and ice-nucleating particle conditions is the natural next step. Even so, the conceptual framework they propose, in which subsidence sets the clock for decoupling, glaciation, and precipitation, offers weather and climate modellers a physically consistent reference for interpreting one of the Arctic’s most consequential cloud transformations.

Subject of Research: The influence of mesoscale atmospheric subsidence on cloud glaciation and boundary-layer decoupling during Arctic marine cold air outbreaks

Article Title: Impacts of mesoscale atmospheric subsidence on cloud glaciation and decoupling in Arctic marine cold air outbreaks

Article References: Paulus, F., Müller, J. J., Kirbus, B., Sodemann, H., van Gelder, L., Walbröl, A., Wendisch, M., & Neggers, R. A. J. (2026). Impacts of mesoscale atmospheric subsidence on cloud glaciation and decoupling in Arctic marine cold air outbreaks. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 26(19), 13983-14014. https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-26-13983-2026

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/acp-26-13983-2026

Keywords: Arctic, marine cold air outbreak, subsidence, mixed-phase clouds, boundary layer, decoupling, cloud glaciation, graupel, large-eddy simulation, dropsondes, HALO-AC3, Fram Strait

The central question the authors tackle is deceptively simple: when two perturbative schemes claim to describe the same experiment, are they actually computing the same thing? The answer, worked out in detail in their manuscript posted on 11 September 2026 as a discussion preprint under review for the journal Magnetic Resonance, is a qualified yes. Bock, Ernst and Uhrig identify the Floquet–Magnus expansion as the essential bridge between the two formalisms. By expressing the Floquet solution in the language of the Magnus expansion, the standard tool for time-dependent perturbation theory, they are able to prove the mathematical equivalence of Floquet theory and average Hamiltonian theory term by term. The equivalence, however, is formal rather than practical. Two calculational routes that lead to identical expressions in principle can still differ enormously in how error-prone, transparent and numerically stable they are along the way, and it is precisely here that the new work makes its mark.

Average Hamiltonian theory has been the workhorse of solid-state NMR since the 1960s. Its logic is intuitive: if the Hamiltonian repeats with a period that is short compared with the timescale on which the interesting dynamics unfold, then over many cycles the system behaves, to a good approximation, as if it evolved under a single constant, effective Hamiltonian. The trick is to compute that effective Hamiltonian as a series of corrections, each involving nested commutators of the Fourier components of the periodic Hamiltonian. The method has an Achilles heel, though. At higher orders it demands explicit time integrations over products of oscillating terms, and those integrations are notorious breeding grounds for algebraic mistakes. Anyone who has carried an average Hamiltonian calculation to third or fourth order knows the tangle of trigonometric factors and commutator chains that must be evaluated without a single slip.

Floquet theory approaches the same physics from a different direction, treating the periodic drive not as a perturbation to be averaged away but as a structural feature of the problem. In the Floquet picture, the Hilbert space of the quantum system is enlarged to include sideband indices that count quanta of the driving frequency, a step closely analogous to how quasi-momentum appears for electrons in a crystal lattice. The time-dependent problem then becomes a time-independent one in the extended space, and standard perturbative machinery can be brought to bear. The authors advocate a specific variant, the Floquet–Van Vleck approach, in which the effective Hamiltonian is accompanied by a second object called the kick operator. The kick operator accounts for the micromotion within each driving cycle, the fast wiggles that the effective Hamiltonian deliberately ignores, and keeping it in the formalism turns out to be essential for a clean and consistent description.

One of the paper’s key technical contributions is a calculation scheme that avoids explicit integration altogether. By working with the Fourier components of the periodic Hamiltonian and separating secular contributions, those terms that survive averaging because they commute with the dominant part of the Hamiltonian, from non-secular ones, the authors obtain a hierarchy of corrections that is far less prone to algebraic error. On this foundation they derive the first four orders of both average Hamiltonian theory and the Floquet expansion, providing the community with explicit analytical expressions at orders where previous treatments often stopped or grew unwieldy. The consistent separation of secular and non-secular pieces, they report, is especially advantageous for numerical robustness, because it keeps the calculation stable even when the perturbative parameters are not particularly small, a situation that arises routinely in real spectrometers where spinning frequencies and radiofrequency amplitudes push against the limits of simple approximations.

The payoff of this rigor is quantified in a striking comparison. Despite the formal equivalence of the two frameworks, the accuracy of the Floquet–Van Vleck approach is about three times better than that of average Hamiltonian theory at the orders studied. The reason is subtle but important: the two methods organize the same physics differently, and the Floquet organization, with its clean split between the effective Hamiltonian and the kick operator, distributes truncation errors more favorably. For experimentalists designing pulse sequences or interpreting high-resolution spectra of solids, a threefold improvement in the accuracy of predicted frequencies and evolution is not an academic nicety. It can determine whether a calculated spectrum matches the measured one well enough to extract structural information about a protein, a catalyst or a battery material, or whether discrepancies are blamed on the theory when they are actually artifacts of the calculational route.

To ground the mathematics in real experiments, the authors examine two canonical test cases. The first is the Bloch–Siegert shift, a small displacement of resonance frequencies caused by the counter-rotating component of an oscillating radiofrequency field, a phenomenon known since the early days of magnetic resonance. Their calculation of this shift out to third order, highlighted in the open discussion accompanying the preprint as particularly revealing, shows how higher-order terms become observable when strong decoupling fields are applied. The second test case involves dipolar coupled spin systems under magic-angle spinning, the technique in which a sample is spun at precisely the angle where the anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions average most effectively, forming the backbone of modern solid-state NMR. Here the periodic drive is mechanical, set by the rotor frequency, and the interplay between spinning, chemical shifts and spin-spin couplings is exactly the kind of problem where the choice of theoretical framework matters most.

The discussion thread attached to the preprint illustrates why this work resonates with practitioners. Commenter Tom Barbara, a veteran of micro-coil NMR, noted that groups working with radiofrequency fields producing nutation frequencies on the order of a megahertz had long wondered why such Bloch–Siegert shifts went unnoticed in spectra. Matthias Ernst’s reply explains the puzzle: all lines in a spectrum shift by the same amount, and since spectroscopists typically measure only relative frequencies, a uniform shift is invisible unless an undecoupled reference is recorded. He points out that recent publications have not only observed but exploited the heteronuclear Bloch–Siegert shift, using it to calibrate the radiofrequency field amplitude of insensitive nuclei, and he recalls personally noticing the significant proton shift that appears when decoupling nitrogen-15 during acquisition. The exchange also touches on a terminological subtlety: the frequency shifts used in MRI to map radiofrequency fields share the Bloch–Siegert name but arise from a different mechanism with a different symmetry under rotations, a confusion that has trailed the field since the early papers by Bodenhausen and Emsley.

What elevates this preprint beyond a methodological housekeeping exercise is its timing. Solid-state NMR is pushing into regimes of ever-faster magic-angle spinning, with rotors now exceeding spinning frequencies of 70 kilohertz in some applications, and into decoupling schemes for nuclei that are difficult to observe directly. In these regimes the perturbative parameters are strained, the boundary between secular and non-secular terms shifts, and the silent assumptions baked into older treatments begin to creak. By proving exactly where Floquet theory and average Hamiltonian theory agree, identifying the Floquet–Magnus expansion as the hinge connecting them, and demonstrating that the Floquet–Van Vleck route with its explicit kick operator delivers superior numerical accuracy, Bock, Ernst and Uhrig have given the magnetic resonance community both a conceptual map and a practical recommendation. The authors’ bottom line is unambiguous: for analyzing magic-angle spinning experiments, Floquet theory is the tool of choice, prized for its numerical robustness, efficiency and accuracy. As the preprint moves through peer review, its four-order analytical results are already positioned to become a reference point for anyone who needs to know precisely what a periodically driven spin system is really doing, cycle after cycle, beneath the measured spectrum.

Subject of Research: Mathematical equivalence of Floquet theory and average Hamiltonian theory and their application to solid-state NMR spectroscopy

Article Title: Floquet Theory and Average Hamiltonian Theory Revisited: Equivalence, Convergence and Applications to NMR

Article References: Floquet Theory and Average Hamiltonian Theory Revisited: Equivalence, Convergence and Applications to NMR. (n.d.). https://doi.org/10.5194/mr-2026-10

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.5194/mr-2026-10

Keywords: Floquet theory, average Hamiltonian theory, NMR spectroscopy, magic-angle spinning, Bloch-Siegert shift, spin dynamics, perturbation theory, Floquet-Magnus expansion, kick operator, solid-state NMR, decoupling, effective Hamiltonian

Researchers led by I Wayan Koko Suryawan of Universitas Pertamina surveyed 640 residents of Jakarta, a megacity of more than ten million people whose rapid digital transformation has accelerated the replacement of laptops, personal computers, and smartphones. The team included end-users, electronics retailers, and representatives of recycling organizations, and supplemented the survey with semi-structured interviews involving government bodies, non-governmental organizations, and private companies. Their goal was to map how consumers weigh cost, convenience, environmental benefit, and data protection when deciding whether to participate in formal e-waste programs.

The study’s central concept is resilience: the capacity of consumers, manufacturers, and institutions to keep collection and recycling systems functioning as technology and policy conditions shift. The authors break consumer engagement into four behavioral attributes. Planning describes whether people organize device disposal on a schedule, ideally guided by brand recommendations. Interest captures motivation to join recycling and data-protection programs. Learning reflects the ability to absorb new disposal practices through education. Coping measures access to practical services, such as manufacturer-supported data erasure, that remove barriers to handing in a device.

To quantify these preferences, the team ran a choice experiment. An initial pool of 540 possible policy profiles, built from five attributes at multiple levels, was reduced to 25 statistically efficient scenarios using an orthogonal design, then grouped into choice sets of two alternatives plus a status quo option. Respondents were asked to pick their preferred program in each set, with payment levels ranging from zero to 50,000 Indonesian rupiah per item. The design was validated by a panel of eight experts, including an NGO officer, a scientist, two educators, and four government officials, and piloted with 50 participants in November 2023 before the main survey ran from December 2023 to March 2024.

The results, analyzed with Random Parameter Logit and Latent Class models, reveal a striking pattern: consumers want help, but not a takeover. Moderate brand guidance for scheduled disposal and secure data destruction carried a positive and statistically significant coefficient, with a marginal willingness to pay of roughly 17,799 rupiah per item. Fully brand-managed disposal, by contrast, was significantly negative. The same asymmetry appeared for education and coping. Gradual, brand-supported learning was the single most valued attribute at 37,835 rupiah per item, while intensive continuous education programs were rejected. Initial use of manufacturer data-handling services drew 26,057 rupiah, but comprehensive service packages were again viewed unfavorably.

The authors interpret this as a preference for incremental assistance that preserves consumer autonomy. Respondents appear to perceive fully centralized programs as complex, costly, or restrictive, and extensive interventions as burdensome relative to their actual needs. Price sensitivity also varied by group: the interaction analysis found that higher-income respondents earning more than 7.5 million rupiah per month, those with bachelor’s degrees, people who replace laptops in under two years, and those older than 39 were more responsive to program costs than the general sample.

The Latent Class Model sorted respondents into two segments. Class 1, about 80 percent of the sample, showed stable and consistent preferences favoring brand-guided disposal, participation in data-protection exchange programs, and sustainable purchasing habits. Its members tend to have higher incomes, higher education, and more frequent device replacement, and are generally younger than 39. Class 2, roughly 20 percent, produced statistically unstable estimates with standard errors far exceeding the coefficients, so the authors caution against reading precise preferences from it, though its existence signals a minority with divergent views on brand involvement.

From these results the team constructed three hypothetical engagement scenarios representing increasing levels of decoupling, the separation of economic activity from environmental harm. In the basic scenario, consumers follow brand-guided disposal routines and join data-protection exchanges, yielding an average willingness to pay of 2,751 rupiah per item. The intermediate scenario adds brand-led education at purchase and initial use of manufacturer data services, raising the figure to 6,177 rupiah. The advanced resilience scenario, combining planned disposal, active data-security participation, sustainable purchasing, and full use of brand-supported services, reaches 8,928 rupiah per item. The progression suggests consumers recognize and will pay for increasingly comprehensive systems.

The implications reach beyond Jakarta’s borders. Data security is a well-documented barrier to formal recycling worldwide, particularly for laptops and personal computers holding sensitive information, and the study indicates that reliable deletion services and transparent privacy protocols can convert hesitant owners into participants. For recyclers, more structured brand-supported collection would deliver predictable, higher-quality material flows and reduce the unsafe dismantling practices common in informal operations. Crucially, the authors stress that formal programs are meant to complement, not replace, Jakarta’s informal network, with buy-back schemes and partnerships that preserve the economic role of informal workers while improving traceability and treatment standards.

The authors also urge caution in generalizing. Jakarta’s density, logistics infrastructure, and high device consumption differ sharply from smaller Indonesian cities and rural regions, where informal collection dominates and formal services are sparse; brand-supported initiatives there would need adaptation through local partnerships and community-based awareness campaigns. Looking forward, they point to digital technologies such as the Internet of Things and distributed ledgers for tracking devices, and to policy instruments like tax benefits and subsidies, noting that evidence from the European Union shows stricter e-waste regulation can substantially lift recycling participation. As consumer attitudes and technology cycles continue to evolve, the study concludes, adaptive monitoring and sustained brand engagement will be essential to keeping e-waste systems resilient.

Subject of Research: Consumer willingness to pay for resilient, data-secure e-waste management in Jakarta

Article Title: Future directions and consumer engagement scenarios for data resilience in e-waste management in Jakarta

Article References: Suryawan, I. W. K., Sari, M. M., Rahman, A., Suhardono, S., & Lee, C.-H. (2026). Future directions and consumer engagement scenarios for data resilience in e-waste management in Jakarta. Cleaner Engineering and Technology, 34, Article 101288. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clet.2026.101288

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: e-waste, Jakarta, consumer behavior, data privacy, recycling, choice experiment, willingness to pay, resilience, informal sector, decoupling, brand engagement, Indonesia