HR4RS stamp
Irene Vega
In the scientific field, both the Circular Economy and Bioenergy are of great interest because they are presented as two emerging solutions to curb the threat of climate change and reduce the ecological footprint. The Circular Economy reformulates the production processes, simplifying them and obtaining as a result the use of resources. While Bioenergy is a type of renewable energy that allows natural resources to be exploited through biological processes and thus contribute to the implementation of a sustainable economic model.
As these are two new fields of research and, therefore, a recent topic in the scientific literature, the Cyberimaginary Research Group has carried out a meta-analysis to find out how they are addressed in different investigations (from articles and scientific publications to congresses). ) educational and communication actions in the areas of Circular Economy and Bioenergy. “In order to achieve an effective transition in production models, it is necessary to raise awareness among citizens and for a general change in mentality to take place. In this sense, educational actions and awareness campaigns are positioned as effective actions when it comes to citizens acquiring skills and developing interest in these areas”, explains Alejandro Carbonell-Alcocer, member of Ciberimaginario and main author of the study.
The research carried out has been published in the scientific journal Sustainability and collects a systematic literature review (SLR) of academic articles published between 2009 and 2019 to analyze the level of methodological maturity of the studies. “An SLR is a rigorous analysis method that allows scientific literature to be retrieved from different databases. In this case, we have recovered from the Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar as they are the most relevant. Following the PRISMA protocol (a model for performing SLR), we identified and selected the articles using keywords related to the object of study and the software Publish or Perish. Finally, once the sample was determined (n=74), we evaluated the articles in their entirety and analyzed the methodological aspects of the investigations”, details the researcher.
The results obtained show that most of the studies carried out are descriptive in nature and are characterized by describing educational interventions. In this sense, the research team points out that "the research that works on Circular Economy and Bioenergy approached from Communication and Education presents a low level of methodological training".
Therefore, this work opens the door to future research, offering the scientific community a contribution of information on the current state of the studies carried out in order to contextualize new studies from the fields of Communication and Education.