Australian public opinions of responsible innovation: Understanding its champions, supporters, moderates, and sceptics

Scientific and technological innovation has become a contested area of societal progress, often compounded by rising levels of societal mistrust and populist thinking. Responding to this, scholars and practitioners are deeply contemplating public ethics, accountability, and risk. At the heart of this motivation lies the domain of Responsible Innovation, where academics alongside applied stakeholders are endeavouring to align the values of innovation with those of society. To further our understanding of value alignment across the diversity of public opinion, this research maps opinions of science and technology through the lens of responsible practice using segmentation analysis on a large Australian sample (N = 2127). We find opinion divided into four typologies: Champions (22 %); Supporters (40 %); Moderates (30 %); and Sceptics (8 %). To investigate the impact of mistrust on these typologies, we assessed their relationship to both mistrust of society and of science, as measured by conspiratorial thinking and anti-science populism. Data showed levels of mistrust to be moderate across all typologies, but societal mistrust to be significantly higher for Sceptics. This research provides a benchmark for public opinions of responsible scientific and technological innovation against which other studies can compare. Moreover, results suggest that societal mistrust may be influencing perceptions of science across all typologies, but particularly for those normally perceived as disinterested or disengaged. These results call for a more concerted application of informed Responsible Innovation principles with which to deliver Responsible Innovation practice.