Matthew Cotton
Biographic Data
| ID | 77576 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Cotton |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Cotton |
| SIGNATURE | COTTON M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Teesside University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8877-4822 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
More than megawatts: The uneven socio-environmental returns from renewable electricity Contracts for Difference in the United Kingdom
Economic analyses of renewable energy policy schemes typically focus on fiscal returns, deployment outcomes, and carbon savings, with broader socio-environmental impacts remaining under-researched. This study evaluates the United Kingdom's Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, assessing monetised social and environmental benefits for offshore wind, onshore wind, and solar photovoltaics (solar-PV) between 2016 and 2025. We develop a novel social …
Community‐Led Adaptation, Weather Extremes, and Health and Wellbeing
Community‐led action is of increasing interest for policy, local government, and the design of adaptation under a changing climate. Previous research has shown how community‐led responses to climate impacts, such as flooding and heat, can be important in mitigating their ill health and wellbeing effects. But the evidence base on the character and nature of such actions by communities is at present scattered. In this paper, we review the internati…
Opportunities and challenges in community-led action on weather extremes for health and wellbeing
Communities play critical roles in mitigating health and wellbeing impacts from weather extremes such as heat, cold and flood events. Community-led actions in affected localities have been shown to be an important part of effective planning and response, particularly in supporting socially and economically marginalised populations. They have also been suggested to face multiple challenges limiting their ability to ensure continuity, scale up, and…
Hydrogen innovation and just transitions: Exploring sociotechnical configurations of energy futures in a post-industrial community
Hydrogen innovation is gaining political momentum to meet climate change and energy security goals. In the UK, hydrogen innovation is centred within industrial hubs including Teesside in Northeast England. This study, based on interviews with industry, policy, and public stakeholders ( n = 14), community workshop participants ( n = 16), and regional survey respondents ( n = 1021) across Teesside, explores the place-based sociotechnical configurat…
Harnessing the sun – addressing sociotechnical barriers to off-grid solar power deployment in Mozambique
Mozambique has substantial solar power potential (23,000GWe) yetonly 83MWe of installed capacity (representing 2% of the total3623MWe generation capacity). Meanwhile, 44% of thepopulation has electricity access, making Mozambique one of theleast-electrified countries. Efforts to scale-up off-grid solarphotovoltaics and improve rural electrification face keysociotechnical challenges. Using interview data from 33 nationalstakeholders, we identify t…
The social amplification of risk and climate disaster preparedness: Lessons from the Kalapara region in rural Bangladesh
Risk perceptions significantly influence how vulnerable communities respond to sudden and gradual onset environmental hazards. In this qualitative study, we adapt the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) based on thematic analysis of 60 interviews with residents of the Kalapara region in rural and coastal Bangladesh. We identify seven components of climate adaptation-relevant risk perceptions that potentially affect household responses t…
Intergenerational Democracy, Environmental Justice and the Case of Nuclear Waste
This book explores the interplay between intergenerational justice and intragenerational justice using nuclear waste management as a consistent case to explore these themes. Lee Towers and Matthew Cotton examine the issue of intergenerational justice from a social scientific perspective, drawing on central case studies of nuclear waste management in Canada, Finland, and the United Kingdom. They connect indigenous philosophies and notions of justi…
A technology to solve the water-energy-food crisis? Mapping sociotechnical configurations of agrivoltaics using Q-methodology
“Agrivoltaics” are solar photovoltaic panels mounted above productive farmland so that energy and food production can occur simultaneously on the same plot. Agrivoltaics are proffered as a means to reduce food-energy land use conflicts, and to ameliorate rural community opposition to ground-mounted solar farms. In this study we examine the socio-economic and environmental claims around agrivoltaics as a set of competing sociotechnical configurati…
Just transitions and sociotechnical innovation in the social housing sector: An assemblage analysis of residents’ perspectives
Creating low-carbon pathways for domestic electricity and heating is a core aspect of the UK Government's housing strategy. Understanding issues of energy justice and the socio-technical dynamics of low-carbon innovation are vital for successfully implementing new technologies and retrofit measures across diverse communities and different housing types. The social housing sector is particularly important in the study of just domestic low-carbon t…
Comparison of sustainability in livestock supply chain
Global gas flaring and energy justice: An empirical ethics analysis of stakeholder perspectives
Global gas flaring harms human and non-human health and well-being while contributing to climate change. Flaring activity in the global oil and gas sector is a significant matter of energy justice – concerning the distribution of risks, benefits and harms, recognition of rights, and decision-making influence within gas-flaring-affected communities. This mixed method empirical ethical analysis of gas flaring and energy justice combines Q-methodolo…
The dynamics of urban household energy poverty and energy transition in Mozambique
Among developing nations, Mozambique has set an ambitious target to achieve universal energy access by 2030 and thus meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 7 to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. By the end of 2024 the government expects to double domestic electricity access to 64 per cent of the population. Yet the quantitative evaluation of electricity access rates belies challenges of e…
Responsibility, engagement, and policy strategy for ocean plastic waste management: A Q-method study of stakeholder perspectives
Ocean plastic waste is an urgent environmental crisis, subject to growing media and policy scrutiny. We use Q-methodology to assess stakeholder perspectives on management practices, finding four emergent discourses concerning: environmental citizenship, global policy responsibility, health prioritization and economic incentivisation. We find stakeholder consensus on the impacts, levels of media coverage and need for action – creating a ‘policy wi…
When fracking comes to town: Governance, planning, and economic impacts of the US shale boom , by Sabina E. Deitrick and Ilia Murtazashvili (eds.)
When fracking comes to town: Governance, planning, and economic impacts of the US shale boom, by Sabina E. Deitrick and Ilia Murtazashvili (eds.)." Journal of Urban Affairs, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Climate change and non-migration — exploring the role of place relations in rural and coastal Bangladesh
Of growing research and policy interest are the experiences of people living under conditions of climate change–induced environmental stress, which either are unable to migrate (sometimes described as a ‘trapped population’) or are seemingly unwilling to do so (sometimes described as the ‘voluntarily immobile’). This paper problematises and expands upon these binary categories: examining the complex dimensionality of non-migration as a form of pl…
Harnessing indigenous knowledge for climate change-resilient water management – lessons from an ethnographic case study in Iran
Through an in-depth ethnographic case study, we explore water management practices within the Jiroft County province in Iran and discuss the applicability of indigenous knowledge of locally-based sustainable water management initiatives to the resource governance challenges of arid and drought-prone regions across the world. The relationship between community social structure, indigenous knowledge, water management technologies and practices, and…
Deliberative democracy and environmental justice: Evaluating the role of citizens’ juries in urban climate governance
Understanding mechanisms of policy engagement and the participation of different actors in urban climate governance is particularly important as cities follow climate emergency declarations with corresponding action, to ensure that inequalities are not exacerbated by climate action. Citizens’ juries are a deliberative democracy tool that allows a demographically representative sample of the population to learn about a contested issue from experts…
Electricity access in Mozambique: A critical policy analysis of investment, service reliability and social sustainability
Mozambique is a resource-rich energy hub, yet rural community access to electricity remains low, and urban centres suffer poor service quality. Aging transmission infrastructure, consumer growth, erratic generation, and extreme weather events exacerbate power cuts and oscillations that disrupt household activities and damage appliances. Through qualitative critical policy analysis of household (n = 120) and public/private stakeholder (n = 87) int…
Deep borehole disposal of nuclear waste: Trust, cost and social acceptability
Globally, radioactive waste governance has been subject to a participatory-deliberative turn. Increasing the opportunities for public involvement is presented as a means to build trust and to alleviate siting conflicts over facility construction. However, a move towards community partnership and voluntarism in site selection belies a lack of social control over technology choice, given the oft-repeated claim of a settled global scientific consens…
Understanding farmers’ climate adaptation intention in Iran: A protection-motivation extended model
Mapping Discourses of Climate Change Adaptation in the United Kingdom
The concept of adaptation is becoming part of mainstream public discourse on climate change. Yet the diversity, complexity, and novelty of the adaptation concept itself leads to interpretive flexibility, differing public understanding of (and engagement with) adaptation strategies, and hence differentiated policy responses. The boundary work of communicative practices and public understanding of the adaptation concept therefore requires empirical…
Fracking and metaphor: Analysing newspaper discourse in the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom
Stakeholder perceptions of marine plastic waste management in the United Kingdom
Environmental Justice as Scalar Parity: Lessons From Nuclear Waste Management
The development of major infrastructure projects, such as power stations, waste facilities or transport networks, commonly raises concerns of how to ensure environmental justice within policy and planning. Environmental justice has been divergently theorised, though procedural/participative, distributive and recognition-related elements are commonly cited. With growing inter-disciplinarity between normative ethics and the geographic social scienc…
Rebirth, Devastation and Sickness: Analyzing the Role of Metaphor in Media Discourses of Nuclear Power
International audience
Shale gas governance in the United Kingdom and the United States: Opportunities for public participation and the implications for social justice
Questions abound about the appropriate governance systems to manage the risks of unconventional oil and gas development, and the ability for citizens to engage and participate in those systems. In this paper, we map the development of shale gas governance in the US and UK; we highlight the contrasting systems of land ownership and mineral rights, compare the opportunities that these systems of governance present the general public to participate …
Stakeholder perceptions of marine plastic waste management in the United Kingdom
Understanding farmers’ climate adaptation intention in Iran: A protection-motivation extended model
Discourses of Energy Infrastructure Development: A Q-Method Study of Electricity Transmission Line Siting in the UK
The construction of new electricity-transmission infrastructure is construed in UK energy policy documents as necessary for achieving government targets to increase low-carbon electricity provision to combat climate change and ensure long-term energy security. Siting high-voltage overhead lines and substations is publicly controversial, however, due to their potential environmental, social, and economic impacts. Also controversial are issues of g…
Climate change and non-migration — exploring the role of place relations in rural and coastal Bangladesh
Of growing research and policy interest are the experiences of people living under conditions of climate change–induced environmental stress, which either are unable to migrate (sometimes described as a ‘trapped population’) or are seemingly unwilling to do so (sometimes described as the ‘voluntarily immobile’). This paper problematises and expands upon these binary categories: examining the complex dimensionality of non-migration as a form of pl…
Environmental Justice as Scalar Parity: Lessons From Nuclear Waste Management
The development of major infrastructure projects, such as power stations, waste facilities or transport networks, commonly raises concerns of how to ensure environmental justice within policy and planning. Environmental justice has been divergently theorised, though procedural/participative, distributive and recognition-related elements are commonly cited. With growing inter-disciplinarity between normative ethics and the geographic social scienc…
Stakeholder perspectives on shale gas fracking: A Q-method study of environmental discourses
The rapid expansion of shale gas exploration worldwide is a significant source of environmental controversy. Successful shale gas policy-making is dependent upon a clear understanding of the dynamics of competing stakeholder perspectives on these issues, and so methods are needed to delineate the areas of agreement and conflict that emerge. This empirical study, based in the United Kingdom, examines emergent perspectives on a range of environment…
Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: A proposed reflective equilibrium‐based deliberative approach
Radioactive waste management facility siting has often been surrounded by political controversy. By attempting to overcome accusations of technocracy, radioactive waste management organisations are reframing the problem in terms of socio‐technical issues requiring the integrative assessment of complex scientific, political and ethical issues and establishing analytic‐deliberative decision‐making processes involving public and stakeholder involvem…
Global gas flaring and energy justice: An empirical ethics analysis of stakeholder perspectives
Global gas flaring harms human and non-human health and well-being while contributing to climate change. Flaring activity in the global oil and gas sector is a significant matter of energy justice – concerning the distribution of risks, benefits and harms, recognition of rights, and decision-making influence within gas-flaring-affected communities. This mixed method empirical ethical analysis of gas flaring and energy justice combines Q-methodolo…
Electricity access in Mozambique: A critical policy analysis of investment, service reliability and social sustainability
Mozambique is a resource-rich energy hub, yet rural community access to electricity remains low, and urban centres suffer poor service quality. Aging transmission infrastructure, consumer growth, erratic generation, and extreme weather events exacerbate power cuts and oscillations that disrupt household activities and damage appliances. Through qualitative critical policy analysis of household (n = 120) and public/private stakeholder (n = 87) int…
Structure, agency and post-Fukushima nuclear policy: An alliance-context-actantiality model of political change
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has radically reshaped domestic Japanese energy policy, political economy and citizen–state relationships within a very short time period. This destabilised period of post-Fukushima nuclear policy is considered in meta-theoretical terms, drawing upon the work of Colin Hay in describing a punctuated evolution model of stability and change. This, in turn, draws upon the concepts of structure and agency, and th…
Hydrogen innovation and just transitions: Exploring sociotechnical configurations of energy futures in a post-industrial community
Hydrogen innovation is gaining political momentum to meet climate change and energy security goals. In the UK, hydrogen innovation is centred within industrial hubs including Teesside in Northeast England. This study, based on interviews with industry, policy, and public stakeholders ( n = 14), community workshop participants ( n = 16), and regional survey respondents ( n = 1021) across Teesside, explores the place-based sociotechnical configurat…
The social amplification of risk and climate disaster preparedness: Lessons from the Kalapara region in rural Bangladesh
Risk perceptions significantly influence how vulnerable communities respond to sudden and gradual onset environmental hazards. In this qualitative study, we adapt the Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) based on thematic analysis of 60 interviews with residents of the Kalapara region in rural and coastal Bangladesh. We identify seven components of climate adaptation-relevant risk perceptions that potentially affect household responses t…
Just transitions and sociotechnical innovation in the social housing sector: An assemblage analysis of residents’ perspectives
Creating low-carbon pathways for domestic electricity and heating is a core aspect of the UK Government's housing strategy. Understanding issues of energy justice and the socio-technical dynamics of low-carbon innovation are vital for successfully implementing new technologies and retrofit measures across diverse communities and different housing types. The social housing sector is particularly important in the study of just domestic low-carbon t…
Deep borehole disposal of nuclear waste: Trust, cost and social acceptability
Globally, radioactive waste governance has been subject to a participatory-deliberative turn. Increasing the opportunities for public involvement is presented as a means to build trust and to alleviate siting conflicts over facility construction. However, a move towards community partnership and voluntarism in site selection belies a lack of social control over technology choice, given the oft-repeated claim of a settled global scientific consens…
Fracking and metaphor: Analysing newspaper discourse in the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom
Ethical assessment in radioactive waste management: A proposed reflective equilibrium‐based deliberative approach
Radioactive waste management facility siting has often been surrounded by political controversy. By attempting to overcome accusations of technocracy, radioactive waste management organisations are reframing the problem in terms of socio‐technical issues requiring the integrative assessment of complex scientific, political and ethical issues and establishing analytic‐deliberative decision‐making processes involving public and stakeholder involvem…
Engaging with Environmental Justice: Governance, Education and Citizenship
Oxford University in July 2010. This e-Book volume presents not just the proceedings of the conference, rather each chapter is a reflective report upon the presentation, feedback and group deliberation emerging from each delegate's contribution to the broader discussion. Together these contributions explore a diverse range of theoretical and practical perspectives on current and future challenges to human and non-human life and wellbeing. Across …
Discourses of Energy Infrastructure Development: A Q-Method Study of Electricity Transmission Line Siting in the UK
The construction of new electricity-transmission infrastructure is construed in UK energy policy documents as necessary for achieving government targets to increase low-carbon electricity provision to combat climate change and ensure long-term energy security. Siting high-voltage overhead lines and substations is publicly controversial, however, due to their potential environmental, social, and economic impacts. Also controversial are issues of g…
Biotechnology and Public Engagement in Europe
Making electricity networks “visible”: Industry actor representations of “publics” and public engagement in infrastructure planning
This interview study with UK electricity distribution and transmission network operators (DNO and TNO) and the regulator Ofgem, examines how key industry actors conceptualise “publics,” “stakeholders” and “customers” and how these conceptualisations subsequently inform their engagement practices with these heterogeneous groups. The results show that regulatory changes to the structure of distribution networks have encouraged greater levels of “st…
Shale gas policy in the United Kingdom: An argumentative discourse analysis
Environmental Justice Challenges in United Kingdom Infrastructure Planning: Lessons from a Welsh Incinerator Project
In the United Kingdom, the development of nationally significant infrastructure projects (NSIPS) such as power stations, waste management facilities, and airports, has become subject to recent changes in legislation and planning practice that have significant environmental justice implications for locally affected site communities. This discussion article examines UK infrastructure planning policy through a procedural environmental justice lens—s…
Structure, agency and post-Fukushima nuclear policy: An alliance-context-actantiality model of political change
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster has radically reshaped domestic Japanese energy policy, political economy and citizen–state relationships within a very short time period. This destabilised period of post-Fukushima nuclear policy is considered in meta-theoretical terms, drawing upon the work of Colin Hay in describing a punctuated evolution model of stability and change. This, in turn, draws upon the concepts of structure and agency, and th…
Stakeholder perspectives on shale gas fracking: A Q-method study of environmental discourses
The rapid expansion of shale gas exploration worldwide is a significant source of environmental controversy. Successful shale gas policy-making is dependent upon a clear understanding of the dynamics of competing stakeholder perspectives on these issues, and so methods are needed to delineate the areas of agreement and conflict that emerge. This empirical study, based in the United Kingdom, examines emergent perspectives on a range of environment…
Rebirth, Devastation and Sickness: Analyzing the Role of Metaphor in Media Discourses of Nuclear Power
International audience
Shale gas governance in the United Kingdom and the United States: Opportunities for public participation and the implications for social justice
Questions abound about the appropriate governance systems to manage the risks of unconventional oil and gas development, and the ability for citizens to engage and participate in those systems. In this paper, we map the development of shale gas governance in the US and UK; we highlight the contrasting systems of land ownership and mineral rights, compare the opportunities that these systems of governance present the general public to participate …
Environmental Justice as Scalar Parity: Lessons From Nuclear Waste Management
The development of major infrastructure projects, such as power stations, waste facilities or transport networks, commonly raises concerns of how to ensure environmental justice within policy and planning. Environmental justice has been divergently theorised, though procedural/participative, distributive and recognition-related elements are commonly cited. With growing inter-disciplinarity between normative ethics and the geographic social scienc…
Mapping Discourses of Climate Change Adaptation in the United Kingdom
The concept of adaptation is becoming part of mainstream public discourse on climate change. Yet the diversity, complexity, and novelty of the adaptation concept itself leads to interpretive flexibility, differing public understanding of (and engagement with) adaptation strategies, and hence differentiated policy responses. The boundary work of communicative practices and public understanding of the adaptation concept therefore requires empirical…
Fracking and metaphor: Analysing newspaper discourse in the USA, Australia and the United Kingdom
Stakeholder perceptions of marine plastic waste management in the United Kingdom
Understanding farmers’ climate adaptation intention in Iran: A protection-motivation extended model
Harnessing indigenous knowledge for climate change-resilient water management – lessons from an ethnographic case study in Iran
Through an in-depth ethnographic case study, we explore water management practices within the Jiroft County province in Iran and discuss the applicability of indigenous knowledge of locally-based sustainable water management initiatives to the resource governance challenges of arid and drought-prone regions across the world. The relationship between community social structure, indigenous knowledge, water management technologies and practices, and…
Deliberative democracy and environmental justice: Evaluating the role of citizens’ juries in urban climate governance
Understanding mechanisms of policy engagement and the participation of different actors in urban climate governance is particularly important as cities follow climate emergency declarations with corresponding action, to ensure that inequalities are not exacerbated by climate action. Citizens’ juries are a deliberative democracy tool that allows a demographically representative sample of the population to learn about a contested issue from experts…
Electricity access in Mozambique: A critical policy analysis of investment, service reliability and social sustainability
Mozambique is a resource-rich energy hub, yet rural community access to electricity remains low, and urban centres suffer poor service quality. Aging transmission infrastructure, consumer growth, erratic generation, and extreme weather events exacerbate power cuts and oscillations that disrupt household activities and damage appliances. Through qualitative critical policy analysis of household (n = 120) and public/private stakeholder (n = 87) int…
Deep borehole disposal of nuclear waste: Trust, cost and social acceptability
Globally, radioactive waste governance has been subject to a participatory-deliberative turn. Increasing the opportunities for public involvement is presented as a means to build trust and to alleviate siting conflicts over facility construction. However, a move towards community partnership and voluntarism in site selection belies a lack of social control over technology choice, given the oft-repeated claim of a settled global scientific consens…
The dynamics of urban household energy poverty and energy transition in Mozambique
Among developing nations, Mozambique has set an ambitious target to achieve universal energy access by 2030 and thus meet the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 7 to ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. By the end of 2024 the government expects to double domestic electricity access to 64 per cent of the population. Yet the quantitative evaluation of electricity access rates belies challenges of e…
Responsibility, engagement, and policy strategy for ocean plastic waste management: A Q-method study of stakeholder perspectives
Ocean plastic waste is an urgent environmental crisis, subject to growing media and policy scrutiny. We use Q-methodology to assess stakeholder perspectives on management practices, finding four emergent discourses concerning: environmental citizenship, global policy responsibility, health prioritization and economic incentivisation. We find stakeholder consensus on the impacts, levels of media coverage and need for action – creating a ‘policy wi…
When fracking comes to town: Governance, planning, and economic impacts of the US shale boom , by Sabina E. Deitrick and Ilia Murtazashvili (eds.)
When fracking comes to town: Governance, planning, and economic impacts of the US shale boom, by Sabina E. Deitrick and Ilia Murtazashvili (eds.)." Journal of Urban Affairs, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Climate change and non-migration — exploring the role of place relations in rural and coastal Bangladesh
Of growing research and policy interest are the experiences of people living under conditions of climate change–induced environmental stress, which either are unable to migrate (sometimes described as a ‘trapped population’) or are seemingly unwilling to do so (sometimes described as the ‘voluntarily immobile’). This paper problematises and expands upon these binary categories: examining the complex dimensionality of non-migration as a form of pl…
Comparison of sustainability in livestock supply chain
Political science (25 works) · Business (20 works) · Economics (19 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Law (15 works) · Public relations (15 works) · Engineering (14 works) · Politics (11 works) · Geography (10 works) · Stakeholder (10 works)