Participation Architecture
How businesses turn climate ambition into everyday action.
Climate action happens through everyday decisions: how we travel, what we buy and how we use resources. But people can want to change and still find the alternatives difficult, expensive or confusing. That is the intention–action gap, and the way businesses operate can help close it or keep it in place.
Working in strategy and sustainability, I saw organisations make climate commitments, then struggle to deliver them through business models built around established ways of producing and consuming. I wanted to understand what needs to change in how businesses design, price and deliver their services so that climate action becomes practical in everyday life.
My research examines how businesses organise that change: what customers need to do, what the business takes responsibility for, and what depends on partners, infrastructure and institutions. I call this distribution of effort, risk and coordination Participation Architecture.1
Effort distributionWho performs the physical and cognitive work of participation, including the knowledge and capabilities it requires.
Risk allocationWho bears the potential downside of participation, including financial loss, service failure, switching costs and exposure of personal information.
Coordination demandThe actors, contracts and systems a participant must navigate, and how far the firm brings these together on their behalf.
Why research startups?
Sustainability startups experiment with how people access, pay for and use services. They provide a setting for examining how businesses change the requirements of participation.
The initial study examines three startup ventures in Aotearoa New Zealand. Comparative research in the Netherlands and United Kingdom will examine how different national conditions shape these arrangements.
What the research contributes
The Participation Architecture Framework examines how pricing, subscriptions, onboarding and other design choices distribute effort, risk and coordination across entry, ongoing use, persistence and exit.
The Participation Architecture Framework
How participation requirements are distributed across customers, firms and supporting systems.
Explore the framework
The framework examines how participation requirements are distributed within a service. The architecture types identify its principal dependencies. Burden Relocation Stability examines whether the arrangements receiving relocated burdens can sustain them.
Select an item for its definition and source.
Doctoral research in progress. Burden Relocation Stability is a proposed mechanism, and the three architecture types remain provisional.
How is participation designed?
Defaults. The settings or actions that apply when a participant makes no active selection.
Sources: Johnson et al., 2012.
Subscription terms. The rules governing commitment, renewal, pausing and cancellation.
Sources: Madrian & Shea, 2001.
Pricing and billing. The structure, timing and presentation of charges, including how costs become visible to participants.
Sources: Gourville & Soman, 2002; Kahneman & Tversky, 1979.
Bundling and integration. The combination of products, services and responsibilities within a single offering.
Sources: Tukker, 2004; Baines et al., 2007.
Service blueprints and onboarding. The customer-facing and internal processes through which participants enter, learn to use and engage with a service.
Sources: Bitner et al., 2008.
Platform governance. The rules governing access, permitted use, fees and the relationship between the platform and its participants.
Sources: Hagiu & Wright, 2015.
Normative framing. How an offering presents participation and establishes expectations about appropriate or ordinary behaviour.
Sources: Tversky & Kahneman, 1981; Nenonen et al., 2024.
Who carries the requirements, and when?
Effort distribution. Who performs the physical and cognitive work of participation, including the knowledge and capabilities it requires.
Sources: Shove, 2010; Mont, 2004.
Risk allocation. Who bears the potential downside of participation, including financial loss, service failure, switching costs and exposure of personal information.
Sources: Kahneman & Tversky, 1979.
Coordination demand. The actors, contracts and systems a participant must navigate, and how far the firm brings these together on their behalf.
Sources: Southerton, 2003.
Participant-borne. The requirement remains primarily with the participant.
Shared. The participant and firm each carry a substantive part of the requirement.
Firm-absorbed. The firm assumes the requirement, directly or through the partners and arrangements supporting its offering.
Entry. Access, registration, verification and initial use.
Sources: Lemon & Verhoef, 2016.
Ongoing use. The recurring activities and service rules involved in participation.
Sources: Lemon & Verhoef, 2016.
Persistence. The arrangements supporting continued participation over time.
Sources: Voorhees et al., 2017.
Exit. The conditions governing cancellation, pausing, departure and return, including the consequences of service closure.
Sources: Voorhees et al., 2017.
What supports or limits these arrangements?
Regulatory. The policies, permissions and compliance requirements shaping how an offering can operate.
Sources: Newell et al., 1999; Rogge & Reichardt, 2016.
Infrastructure. The physical and service infrastructure needed to support participation.
Sources: Cervero & Kockelman, 1997; Mont, 2004.
Financial. The capital and financing arrangements supporting operations and the absorption of participation burdens.
Sources: Gillingham & Palmer, 2014; Adner, 2017.
Cultural. The norms, expectations and legitimacy shaping acceptance of an offering.
Sources: Suchman, 1995; Delmas & Burbano, 2011.
Retention. Continued participation over time.
Theoretical foundations
Environmental psychology. Examines how structural and contextual conditions constrain environmental action alongside individual motivation.
Sources: Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002; Bamberg & Möser, 2007; Gifford, 2011.
Social practice theory. Examines how everyday activities depend on materials, competences and meanings, and how these are organised across people and systems of provision.
Sources: Warde, 2005; Shove, 2010; Shove et al., 2012.
Behavioural decision research. Examines how defaults, framing and decision conditions influence choice.
Sources: Thaler & Sunstein, 2008; Johnson et al., 2012.
Service and interface design. Examines how service processes, customer journeys and interfaces organise ongoing engagement.
Sources: Tukker, 2004; Bitner et al., 2008; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016.
Markets and market-shaping. Provides the principal theoretical basis for examining how firms and other actors reshape market arrangements and redistribute burdens.
Sources: Vargo & Lusch, 2004; Nenonen & Storbacka, 2021; Baker & Nenonen, 2026.
Three architecture types distinguish what an offering depends on most: participants, commercial partners or institutions.
What the offering relies on
Select a circle or type to explore its case.
The types are provisional, each developed from one case.
Burden Relocation Stability, my proposed mechanism, explains why a service can work for customers while the arrangements behind it become vulnerable. It examines whether those taking on customers’ effort, risk and coordination have the capacity, stability and flexibility to carry them as conditions change.
Business, marketing and the climate transition
Business decisions about pricing, access and service design shape whether lower-impact choices are practical.
The research helps founders, investors and policymakers see what participation requires and what keeps it viable.
About Martin
Martin Bryan advises businesses and founders on strategy and sustainability and is a PhD researcher at the University of Otago.
He is the former Global Chief Sustainability Officer at IPG Mediabrands, the global media and marketing arm of Interpublic (IPG), a Fortune 500 advertising group acquired by Omnicom in 2025. His experience spans two decades of brand strategy, sustainability leadership and applied industry research.
Speaking
Martin is available for keynotes, conference panels and moderated conversations on business, marketing and the climate transition. He draws on doctoral research and experience leading sustainability in a global marketing organisation.