1 Indispensable technological development

The transformation of early civilisation to modern civilisation is predominantly a consequence of adopting technology. Technology is the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes and, therefore, aims to solve the problems at hand more quickly and accurately. Considering that technology use requires energy, based on the fundamental foundation of scientific knowledge, technology has the propensity to impact society and the neighbourhood environment [1,2,3], at least in the long run, if not in the short run. Therefore, the success of new technology is conditional on its long-run impact [4].

The continuous evolution of civilisation alters the demands in various facets of life, hence the requirement for technology. Technological development, initially based on human needs, changes as society evolves. Albeit technology entwines development, the development outcome represents only a slice of that relationship [5]. This technological development results in economic growth [6, 7], environmental changes [8], depletion of minerals and organic resources [9], and inequality [10]. Therefore, while technology ameliorates society by providing solutions, it also breeds new problems. Since technology entrenches our society, there is a call for consensus regarding the specifications of the technologies to pursue a continuous growth process without stressing the Anthropocene.

The concept of “development” is normative and responds to a given society’s social, economic, cultural, and political constraints, while technology aids in achieving societal goals. The indirect relationship between technology and socio-economic policies is the radix of the choice of appropriate technology. Based on this indirect relationship, incubating alternative technologies rather than appropriate technology in developing and emerging economies is not sporadic. While alternative technologies such as electric vehicles, self-fertilising crops, passive solar building design, and water pumps are environmentally friendly, sustainable, and affordable, these technologies still require energy and produce waste. Moreover, as per the WHO report(2013), in developing countries, appropriate technology involves the transfer of high-end technologies by eliminating features and modification for cost reduction. Therefore, the technology loses its appropriateness [11], and the concept of sustainable technology starts to gain prominence. However, the choice of technology remains a core concern as, in the aftermath, there can be stress on the environment. Despite the prominence of globalisation and the increased importance of environmental regulation on trade barriers, the choice of technology is still conditional on the development perspective [12, 13], internal structure [14, 15], size of the economy and awareness of the decision-makers [16].

Researchers argue that science and technological development are disparate and nuanced since the criteria for accepting or rejecting a technology involve context and value [17]. Again, value is subjective and conditional on the stakeholder’s belief that stems from the mass media reports based on limited available information and shreds of decisive pieces of evidence to fit the reality. Therefore, coupled with limited awareness and belief based on secondary sources, the choice of technology emanates from attitude. Attitude is interrelated with belief and is cognitive (thoughts about the object), affective (feelings about the object), and behavioural (actions related to the object). Consequently, the choice of appropriate technology is subjective to the perception and awareness of the stakeholders.

Indubitably, the choice of technology is a multidimensional problem. The multidimensional aspects of the choice of technology render the process complex and necessitate a set of holistic criteria to assess alternative technology’s multicriteria and multidimensional impact in selecting appropriate technology. The appropriate technology movements, since the 1970s, have continuously attempted to fit the biophysical and psychosocial framework prevailing in a specific location and time [18]. While the role of technology is ubiquitous in the development paradigm, especially sustainable development, the appropriateness of technology still centres on addressing local challenges, ignoring its global impact. e.g., a pollutant country leaves an environmental impact on its neighbouring countries [19]. Although limited, a few empirical studies [20,21,22,23,24,25,26] also address the choice of technology using various methods by considering local challenges while global issues persist. The significance of addressing challenges in choosing appropriate technologies is gaining further momentum due to the recent resource-incentive innovations such as IoT, AI, and blockchains that contribute to electronic waste and environmental stress. Balancing global consideration with environmental stress and market mechanism, sustainable technology incorporates several ideas integral to appropriate technology. However, sustainable technology is not exempt from various social, economic and environmental trade-offs. In navigating these trade-offs, various governments grapple with the Collingridge dilemma [27] early in the innovation process, as the full consequences of the technology are unknown, and hence, the need for change might not be entirely apparent. Conversely, when intervention is deemed necessary, the changing course becomes expensive, complex and time-consuming [28]. Consequently, governance of new technology poses a persistent challenge. Subsequently, the design of the technology movement requires to be in unison with nature rather than dominating it. In many countries, this appropriate technology movement encompasses colossal organisation networks, trial projects, and assessment of experiments and has an identifiable plethora of literature of its own [29,30,31,32,33,34]. Various organisations and institutions such as the Joint Research Centre(JRC) or EU, Centre Ecologique Albert Schweitzer (CEAS), Center For Development Alternatives, Engineers Without Borders, Open Source Ecology, Practical Action, and Village Earth are actively involved in dealing with the challenges of appropriate technology choice. Among these, JRC plays a crucial role in developing and implementing key EU policies like the European Green Deal, the EU Research and Innovation Strategy, and the Digital Single Market Strategy, contributing to enhancing food safety, developing advanced materials, and improving disaster preparedness across the EU. However, this evolution of the appropriate technology movement experiences an inability to alter the pattern of technology choice implemented by mainstream society. Given the alarming stress on the environment and climate change, there is a need to comprehend the challenges to formulate new strategies.

This study aims to analyse the pathways of technology development by examining the various facets of technology development and their impact on society, the environment, and the economy to draw a path in understanding the enigmas of appropriate technology choice and propose a pathway model to address the issues.

2 Quest for sustainable technology

The sustainable technology concept is ambiguous [35], as innovation and technological development tend to discard old technology over time. However, the preference for new advanced technology over the old one depends on the stakeholders’ perspectives. Therefore, depending on their ambitions and audiences, policymakers, stakeholders, and technology firms articulate the term sustainability [36].

While delivering sustainability is discerning a way to meet the demand using a fraction of the resources we currently use today [37], recent studies highly emphasise the impact of technology on the environment [38,39,40] to indicate sustainability. Consequently, innovation and technological development raise an increasing concern about the conflicts between ‘sustainability’ and ‘preparedness’ and between ‘competitive innovation’ and ‘technological progress’ [35]. Sustainability, therefore, describes various complex, unpredictable, and disputed choices between contending innovation pathways [41]. An intrinsic conflict remains since these paths are not equally vigorous but interrelated.

Again, technology and society co-evolve and trigger new needs and conditions for technology. As a result, innovation’s widely used life-cycle analysis breaks down in measuring the impact with an infinite list of aspects of sustainable development. People develop technology while technology influences people, and the interaction maintains a balance between technology, society, the environment, and civilisation. The evolution of civilisation ameliorates technology adoption to meet the escalating demand in various aspects of life, forcing rapid innovation and technological development. The impact of new technology initially remains unknown as innovation and technological development mainly contemplate a specific dimension, while society may encounter a multidimensional impact. This multidimensional impact arises from the intended, unintended, or little-understood risk that all types of technology carry due to the influence of the social, political, and economic elements in which these technologies function [5] but are not limited to local conditions.

As per the researchers [29, 42], appropriate technology mounts local conditions and economically and efficiently employs existing resources to meet local needs. Nevertheless, adjacent regions may pose conflicting interests and experience an adverse impact of the same technology. Consequently, sustainability priory requires regional agreement to implement such technologies. Therefore, despite the existing race for advanced technology, rather than limiting the choice between high and low technologies, the focus requires selecting between “appropriate” and “inappropriate technologies” [43].

All technologies carry uncertainties in the form of risks and benefits. Responses to these ambivalences intend to maximise the return and minimise the risks associated with technological change [5]. Therefore, appropriate technology requires proper examination and evaluation by experts from various fields before use. Granting that the continuous innovation process helps understand the multidimensional impact of discarding the specific technology, circumstances may compel researchers to placate time testing the new technology before using the same in the field.Footnote 1 Therefore, it remains a difficult proposition to discard a technology in the short run. Therefore, society situationally uses technology as a short-run solution rather than considering the long-run impact of being part of the race for technological development.

The race for technological development alters the interaction balance between technology and civilisation and invites new challenges. Modern technologies mostly run on electricity and generate heat, causing global warming. Consequently, cooling technologies alter the ecological balance through ozone depletion, resulting in ultraviolet radiation and heat. Therefore, this vicious circle, indicating a long-run solution, is still significant for the current problems. Nonetheless, scientists hitherto conceive permanent technology solutions, and cognition of the impact of existing technologies forces policymakers to initiate a search for alternative technologies. Considering the relevancy of the cooling industry in the modern world as well as its impact on nature, many countries, including Europe, as per the Montreal agreement, are implementing restrictions on centralised refrigeration systems in the commercial sector from January 2022 (Regulation (EU) No 517/2014 [3]). As a part of the process, along with scientific development and global concern, many countries are phasing out high GWP refrigerators with natural refrigerants. However, these natural refrigerants are highly flammable, toxic, and have high working pressure, posing barriers to their rapid implementation. Therefore, civilisation took almost three decades to comprehend the overall impact of existing cooling technologies. In a fast-paced society, these three decades are enduring to discard a technology, and society may experience a truncated period to discard a new technology in the future.

Since technology impacts the environment, human society, or both, a comprehensive analysis of direct and indirect impacts may develop technological development pathways. However, this method is time-consuming. Therefore, the quest for sustainable technology as a solution for sustainable development is on and remains a cause of concern.

3 Entanglement of science and politics

Progressively, the areas of economics, social study, philosophy and history of technology renounce the deterministic, single-directional perspective of technological progress and shift to a multifaceted, dynamic approach considering the focus on the aspects of autonomy [44], momentum [45], path dependency [46], opportunities and expectations [47], co-construction [48], social shaping of technology [49], contingency [50], lock-in [51], and entrapment [52]. Therefore, instead of being unitary, the choice of technology is now relatively open to economic priorities, organisational or institutional goals, collective ingenuity, stakeholder negotiation and power exercise.

This evolution of technology development makes technology an integral element of the social and ecological system that emerges within a specific socio-cultural milieu [53]. A specific technology addresses a specific issue and may invoke an adverse impact if the same technology addresses other issues. While cultural variation leads to using specific technology for a different purpose, there can be a comprehensive (positive or negative) impact on the associated environment. Therefore, variation across cultures is the genesis of the dilemma between the contending technological pathways. Stirling [35] argued that these dilemmas are intrinsically political.

Notwithstanding policymakers’ and scientists’ desire to have policy decisions grounded on solid scientific evidence, they have a communication gap. This communication gap is generally attributed to the difference in their priorities, backgrounds, and incentives [54]). Although no dearth of literature aims to improve this communication, a formal study in this context is absent. The absence of formal study stems from the structure of the public policy system, where repeated trials are infeasible to replicate real-world governance. Moreover, myriad confounding factors make the analysis complicated.

Since academia and government bear different organisational structures subject to different institutional constraints, scientists are vulnerable and less plausible in the policy formulation space and viewed as less credible in promoting a specific political intent [55]. Policymakers prefer scientists to brief skilfully in public meetings, committee hearings and mass media to identify their reputation as they consider this an essential factor in working with them [54].

Policymakers often introduce policies referencing scientific advancement while measures of technologies’ impact on other areas are still pending. Impoverished consideration of the divergent assumptions, cross-disciplinary tensions, and subjective edifices, countries exercise a confrontation between evidence and strategy [56, 57]. Therefore, missing out on the interrelation among organisational interests, economic power, and political influences in policy formulation weakens the democratic consensus [58].

Moreover, policymakers invoke science as justification for the policy without acknowledging the uncertainties, alternative interests or priorities.Footnote 2 Therefore, these policies, albeit gain short-run competitiveness for certain individual entities, may fail to maximise the outcome of an economy in the long run. Concurrently, this policy approach addresses multidimensional human progress only based on economic competitiveness [59]. Notwithstanding the difficulty in identifying a technology with pervasive general acceptance, evidence shows that the dynamic political discourse and power exercise intend to justify the present science and technology development (e.g., debate on GM crops and nuclear energy use). In this regard, policymakers use principles of precaution [60, 61] to peril the ‘anti-science attitudes’ and ‘rejection of technology’ by opposing ideologists [62]. Moreover, according to the ‘precautionary principle, a pervasive hostility to precaution may also unite diametrically opposing ideologies.

As undeniably an essential resource in decision-making, science is a necessary rather than sufficient condition for effective policy formulations. Consequently, attempts to profess differently are inexpedient to democracy, scientific progress, and the global environment stress. Therefore, a national innovation system needs to understand the nation’s requirements and approve the technology before policymakers include the same in the policy statement.

4 Market failure rationale and resource optimality

Society’s perspectives of technology change as civilisation evolves. The perspective of modern technology development aspires to produce more efficiently and secure higher profit [63]. The technology firm’s increased resource efficiency and profit motive encourage consumption and the resultant rebound effectFootnote 3 embroils environmental issues [64]. As per the rebound effect, energy efficiency increases energy consumption [65, 66]. Moreover, while technology design aims to increase profit by promoting higher consumption, exchange value becomes more important than the use-valueFootnote 4, resulting in a divergence between the perceived and actual benefits. Consequently, economy and technology are not subject to individual or civilisation needs anymore; instead, individuals and civilisation become hingeing on the imperative of technology, production, and consumption patterns.

The effectiveness of the profit motive is conditional on the market mechanism. Although the market mechanism reallocates resources optimally, the risk and uncertainties associated with the technology development may spur market failure and invoke environmental stress. Since the environment is a public good, a single country fails to receive returns proportional to its contribution. Moreover, risk captures attention when a similar event transpires, and securing benefits from such events is difficult; therefore, solutions are speculative. Action adopted to ameliorate these risks may require regulation. This regulation leads to market failure, as sparsely populated industries will benefit equally. Therefore, collaboration among the countries is essential in operating a market mechanism, especially for science and technology. Albeit the transformative effect of globalisation due to digitalisation has expedited development, it has also led to digital monopolies and consequently resulted in higher prices for consumers, giving rise to new types of inequalities and social divides [67]. However, technology providers’ profit-making objectives from their R&D initiatives may not adhere to social responsibility. Therefore, as the divergence between private and social costs (benefits) grows, market manipulation drives towards a sub-optimal resource allocation [68,69,70,71,72] and thus leads to market failure. According to Arrow, the significant forces of market failure concerning science and technology are indivisibility, inappropriability, and uncertainty.

There is no doubt that the problem stems from the interactive behaviour of the system agents; therefore, the government requires not only to deal with market failure but also with system failure [73,74,75,76,77,78]. The innovation’s complex and evolutionary nature makes the market failure rationale inapt for innovation policy. Nevertheless, there is an increasing concern regarding the influence of powerful technology firms on the government to use market failure rationaleFootnote 5 as a political tool for policy argument and system failure rationale to justify the government intervention in supporting science and technology [79]. Therefore, appropriate technology may lack a successful market run but can have immense value for development and reduce environmental stress. Since the inadequacy of the market failure theory fails to support policy formulation by providing a guideline, it is imperative to avoid the market failure rationale in adopting technology to minimise the divergence between private benefit and social benefit.

5 Vigour of stakeholders’ awareness

The concerted behaviour of the system agents is conditional on the level of awareness. There is an increasing awareness regarding the status of the environment, which prompts people to choose organic food and cleaner technologies. This awareness also impacts cross-border activities [80, 81], reducing pollution emissions both by donors and recipients. According to Hirazawa and Yakita [81], increasing awareness helps to increase welfare by protecting the environment. However, there is no evidence that this awareness reduces the level of consumption which requires energy. The development perspective emphasises welfare, which is a function of consumption [82]. Higher consumption requires a greater volume of natural resources and energy. A rise in consumption leads to an increase in the demand for energy even while the most efficient technologies produce those goods. Therefore, increasing awareness does not reduce consumption and energy requirements and subsequently does not reduce environmental stress.

Moreover, along with the producers’ profit motive, appropriate technology for development also stimulates consumption. Therefore, the choice of technology for development does not call for a reduction in consumption, hence a reduction in energy use to reduce environmental stress. Although the sustainable development concept emphasises reducing environmental stress, the choice of energy-efficient technology, albeit significant, fails to reduce the total energy demand. While innovation and technological development increase energy supply through multiple sources, the energy demand, even in the aftermath of the innovation of energy-efficient technologies, does not plummet because of the rebound effect. Therefore, there is an enigma of appropriate technology choices.

Notwithstanding the significant reliance on technology in addressing environmental stress and a reluctance to reduce production and consumption growth [18], the choice of technology is conditional on the stakeholders’ awareness. In general, the genesis of the stakeholders’ awareness is the mass media report based on limited information and insufficient decisive events to fit reality. Therefore, mass consumption patterns and technology usage are conditional on their perceived level of awareness.

Increasing awareness regarding environmental stress leads active industries, researchers, and policymakers to believe in cleaning technology while cognisance is on developing clean technology. Cleaning technology as a technology fix addresses problems generated by the old technology still in use, and the wide use of clean technology is yet to replace the existing technologies as the effectiveness of clean technologies is still unknown. Moreover, increasing technology usage, regardless of type, generates higher energy consumption, leading to a higher demand–supply gap and greater environmental stress.

The rising concern about the energy shortage arose in the early 1960s [83, 84]. Over time, while the technological innovation of nuclear and solar energy significantly contributes to the supply of energy as an alternate source, energy demand rises at a much higher rate as a consequence of rapid innovation in general-purpose technologies. Thus, the imparity between energy supply and demand continues to expand. The current concern appears to be more of an institutional constraint and inefficient allocation, as many countries do not have the technology or capacity to produce energy to meet the daily requirements. This shortage of energy destabilises society and the economy.Footnote 6

Increasing dependence on technology causes energy shortages and adds problems of disposal of residuals to environmental hazards. Awareness of these issues calls for balancing the production capacity and disposal of residuals to balance the resources. Therefore, choosing the appropriate technology for the development perspective is multidimensional and requires solving multilevel dilemmas, which are impossible to solve with a single strategy.

6 Existing frameworks for addressing appropriate technology choice

Multiple approaches exist to address the intricate task of selecting appropriate technology to alleviate environmental stress. The US Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Schumacher Center for New Economics promote sustainable technology assessment(STA) by prioritising community participation to minimise environmental stress associated with specific technologies. However, incorporating a political dimension into risk interpretation introduces uncertainty in the outcomes [85].

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) champions the Appropriate Technology (AT) concept, employing a quantitative objective assessment procedure involving screening, scoping, and detailed assessment. Despite incorporating scenarios from STA, its implementation poses challenges, particularly in resource-limited developing countries. The lack of standardisation in methodology can result in inconsistencies and hinder comparisons.

The green and clean technology (GCT)approach focuses on mitigating the negative impact of human activities by utilising renewable energy, green buildings, electric vehicles, and organic farming. Successful development of GCT relies on collaborative efforts from government, private companies, non-government organisations, and substantial investments [86]. Despite ongoing efforts to establish a universally accepted framework, a consensus has yet to be achieved.

The Industrial Ecology (IE) approach views industrial systems as interconnected ecosystems, aiming to minimise waste and maximise resource reuse through closed-loop production cycles. While emphasising resource reuse to alleviate environmental stress, IE overlooks material market dynamics, faces perceived legal implications, and contends with an economic system that undervalues environmental benefits [87].

Despite these approaches addressing the challenges of appropriate technology choice, none have managed to reshape technology selection practices in mainstream contexts. Therefore, there is a need to formulate an alternative model to address this issue.

7 Way forward

As a probable solution to discard the anti-growth movement’s idea, researchers propose a stable bioecological equilibrating system to redirect economic activities to curb the environmental stress that stems from human activities [88]. In this regard, Ruttan [1] suggests considering technical change as a change in relative resource endowment to emphasise the induced innovation. However, the impact of induced innovation on the environment is minimal [89].

Therefore, we suggest policymakers redirect technical efforts to reduce environmental stress, as described in Fig 1 below. Our proposed model exhibits Impactful and Approved System-centric technology for the Environment (IASE) as a pathway to the choice of technology.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Source: Authors’ contribution

Proposed Model for selection of appropriate technology.

Full size image

Although various consortiums deal with the different aspects of climate and environmental issues, there is a need for a consortium of national innovation systems to evaluate the impact of technological innovation before allowing a technology firm to market the same. Second, a set of unbiased global regulation rules requires limiting the use of harmful technologies. Although local development is also essential, the consortium must ensure that the countries adhere to uniform rules and regulations with the aid of the global environment. Third, policymakers should be allowed to formulate a strategy regarding technology use only after receiving the consortium’s approval. This approach may limit the use of harmful technologies for political gain and silence alternative ideologies. Fourth, policymakers and individuals decide whether to increase the consumption level in the name of development or to sacrifice by reducing the individual consumption level to save the world.

8 Conclusion

Science and technology innovations are autonomous and mostly unresponsive to social and economic forces. In a market economy, innovation activities are primarily private-sector activities; hence, the provision for innovation activity is conditional on private-sector incentives. Notwithstanding, the allocation to any specific sector is contingent on the relative sizes of different sectors, the degree of appropriateness, and the core “innovation-possibility frontier” (the new knowledge production function) [89]. Therefore, the choice of appropriate technology rather requires to be conditional on the system failure rather than the market failure.

Again, more efficient technology produces more, stimulates consumption, and contributes to resource depletion instead of conserving resources. Moreover, technologies with less detrimental side effects might effectuate the transfer of production or illegal use, thus exacerbating complications. Since the innovator does not determine the complete set, it is a public matter to describe its use, tax, or even forbid its use. Therefore, experts’ and policymakers’ interventions are needed while imposing restrictions or regulations. These regulations, again, in turn, provide a direction for scientific and technological innovation.

There is no doubt that, albeit intricating, a systematic approach congruence with the idea of reducing environmental stress linkage across the various stakeholders can reduce the complexity of choosing appropriate technology.