REFEST has successfully achieved Milestone 15, led by RINA partners, marking an important step forward in understanding the social perceptions surrounding the project’s key technologies.
This milestone focused on analysing how a diverse group of stakeholders, including workers, local communities, consumers, value chain actors and society at large, perceive the main solutions developed within REFEST. The assessment was based on around 20 completed questionnaires covering technologies such as hybrid propulsion, solar panels, recyclable materials, air lubrication systems, optical fiber sensors, hull appendages, eco-driving and DPS.
The analysis provided a valuable overall picture of the social themes most relevant across the project. Stakeholders consistently assigned medium to high importance to aspects such as health and safety, fair competition, skills and technology development, and the promotion of social responsibility. These dimensions emerged as broadly significant across almost all the technologies examined.
At the same time, the results highlighted important differences between technologies. For solutions involving critical raw materials, such as batteries and solar panels, supply chain responsibility emerged as a key concern, while for recyclable materials, including battery boxes and appendages, end-of-life management proved particularly relevant.
Some topics were perceived as less significant in the REFEST context, especially those not directly linked to the technologies or considered of limited relevance by respondents, such as ethical treatment of animals, migration, forced labour and child labour. Finally, the analysis also identified a number of themes that will require further investigation in the next phases of the project, where stakeholder views were more heterogeneous or the available responses were still limited.
