ABSTRACT
Phase-out is playing an increasingly prominent role as a policy approach to address various sustainability challenges. From leaded gasoline to agrochemicals and coal-fired power plants, a diversity of substances, technologies and other harmful elements are being targeted by interventions that govern their gradual decline over time. While this rising prominence is reflected in a burgeoning body of interdisciplinary research on phase-out, little effort has been undertaken to document where these scholarly conversations take place, what empirical contexts they relate to, and what insights the literature has generated for research and policy. To address these gaps, this chapter systematically reviews 868 academic publications on phase-out. Findings indicate that a variety of academic communities from the social and natural sciences, engineering, medicine and others contribute to scholarly debates about phase-out. While phase-out was initially associated strongly with the challenge of atmospheric ozone depletion, it has also been considered as a tool to tackle human health and other environmental challenges. Since 2015, climate change mitigation has come to the fore in phase-out research. Based on our topography of sustainability-related phase-out research, we provide directions for conceptually oriented and empirical research avenues, for instance with respect to the role of public policy instruments and the ways in which phase-out may shape the broader evolution of socio-technical systems.
