Research area Valentina Ausserladscheider

Climate Change, Markets, and Society is a research cluster focused on how political and economic actors respond to the challenges posed by climate change. We examine the shifting interplay between climate-related risks, policy developments, and market dynamics, and how these processes both shape and reflect broader societal values and economic structures. By examining societal responses across different markets, we aim to provide in-depth, empirically grounded analysis of how contemporary societies - across politics, economics, and everyday life - are navigating climate change.

Currently, we have two key research projects:

SCAST - Sustainable Climate Change Adaption in Skiing Tourism

in collaboration with Luis Willis (University of Vienna), Robert Steiger (University of Innsbruck) und Katharina Pöll (University of Innsbruck)

Abstract: 
Mountainous regions in Austria are highly dependent on income from the skiing tourism industry which faces negative impacts from climate change. However, little is known about why some destinations already have a diverse range of climate change adaptation measures in place, while others solely rely on artificial snowmaking. The sustainable climate change adaptation in skiing tourism (SCAST) project aims to assess the status and potential of climate change adaptation in Austria´s skiing tourism destinations. Identifying facilitating as well as hindering factors for sustainable climate change adaptation, its outcomes helps to support climate change adaptation policy in one of Austria´s most climate-vulnerable industries. Using a mixed-methods approach combining primary and secondary quantitative data sources with expert interviews and stakeholder workshops the project will help to make climate change adaptation more tangible, while accounting for hard-to quantify realms of climate change adaptation like social and political interrelations within the host destinations. Project client: FFG

Institutionalising sustainable finance in European capital markets

Dominik von Gehlen

Abstract:
This research project investigates the institutionalisation of sustainability in the European capital market, examining how sustainability is socially constructed in financial terms. Drawing on a discursive institutionalist framework, the project analyses how disclosure-based regulations that mandate financial actors to articulate the integration of sustainability considerations into their investment processes has shaped a specific meaning of sustainability. Through a qualitative research design combining semi-structured interviews with stakeholders across the sustainable finance market, document analysis of fund prospectuses, and observations at investor summits and webinars, the project demonstrates that sustainability is not an objective artefact but emerges through a broad actors network that collectively constructs and legitimises what sustainability means. Focusing empirically on the European fund market, the project shows that sustainability is not a static but a dynamic concept that reconfigures in response to geoeconomic and geopolitical disruptions. Contributing to the political economy of sustainable finance, the project argues that disclosure-based regulations institutionalise sustainability as a legitimation category rather than a substantive constraint, allowing financial actors to sustain credible sustainability claims even as the concept is reconfigured under shifting conditions.