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First, the items had to fulfil the criticism function of utopia by indicating that the world has pressing issues that need to be resolved.,
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In some items, we used general phrases such as “the biggest issues of our age” for respondents to decide what these issues are (eg, item 13; appendix p 9). In other items, we referred to the most pressing global problems (eg, climate change and economic and social inequality) aligned with SDGs,
which are typically specified in the literature on utopia
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or other scholarly publications.
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Importantly, the items had to fulfil the change rather than the compensation function of utopia.,
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Indeed, linked to daydreaming and escapism, the compensation function might manifest itself as being disengaged from society and practicing inaction rather than transformative action,,
which leaves the compensation function out of the scope of our analysis. Our items reflected people’s propensity to engage in thoughts or pursue actions aimed at transforming the world by tackling its current issues. In relation to thoughts, the items assessed the extent to which people themselves are inclined to think about ideas to transform the world (eg, item 14; appendix p 10) or are motivated to search for such ideas developed by others or react positively when they encounter them (eg, item 9; appendix p 11). In relation to actions, some items referred more generally to actions to change the world (eg, item 12; appendix p 9) and some others to specific actions (eg, item 26; appendix p 12). Regarding specific actions, we focused on the choice of socially conscious products and services that could create a change by tackling issues the world is currently facing (eg, exploitation, economic inequality, and environmental issues), and are thus considered utopian.
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Promoting sustainable and equitable patterns of consumption by supporting sustainable business models that address social, environmental, and commercial goals has consistently been identified among the essential steps needed to transform our societies.
It is worthwhile to note that our items did not employ market-related verbs such as pay, buy, or purchase, so that the choice or selection of such products or services can also include non-monetary exchanges (eg, the SDGs in Action mobile application). As another aspect of the change function of utopia, we went beyond assessing people’s own actions that contribute to transforming the world. We probed whether people search for or positively respond to currently existing solutions developed by others that could potentially transform the world (eg, item 40; appendix p 12), or how likely people are to believe that such solutions exist even if they are not widely adopted or easily identified (eg, item 53; appendix p 11). Indeed, various publications concerning utopia emphasise that the solutions that could transform the society might already exist at present (ie, they are concrete), and could lead to change if they were widely adopted or scaled up.,
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Finally, all our items had to satisfy the three distinct levels of the utopian impulse: body, time, and the collective dimension.
Regarding body, all the items involved words linked to motivation, affect, and action (eg, drive, impulse, urge, feeling, excitement, and choices).,
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Concerning time, we created items that used past, present, or future tenses, given that the transformative utopian impulse is also about taking insights and inspiration from the progress achieved in the past, and the solutions or ideas available at present to ultimately transform the future.,
In this regard, our items did not include the past tense in relation to returning to an idealised past, but in relation to being inspired or motivated by ideas that successfully transformed the world. The final important aspect of our items is that they had to involve the collective dimension,
and thus emphasise or imply that transforming the world benefits people collectively (eg, item 2 appendix p 11) rather than a single individual, in contrast to personal utopias.
We first created an initial pool of 59 items based on these principles, and these items were then shared with expert utopian scholars for feedback. Given that the concept of the utopian impulse was originally proposed and discussed by Ernst Bloch, and that our goal in developing this scale was to engage with the scholarly literature on the humanities, we identified and corresponded with scholars who have expertise in his work to attain feedback regarding the initial scale items. These experts included Lyman T Sargent, Darren Webb, Rainer Zimmermann, Peter Thompson, and Athanasios Marvakis. Although our main criterion when contacting these scholars was expertise in Bloch’s conceptualisation of the utopian impulse, many of the scholars are generally considered leaders in the field of utopian studies who have made seminal contributions regarding utopian scholarship. For example, Lyman T Sargent is one of the world’s foremost scholars on utopian studies. He is the founding editor of Utopian Studies and served as the editor during the journal’s first 15 years. He is also the recipient of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the Society for Utopian Studies and has written Utopianism: a Very Short Introduction,
in which he covers the current state of knowledge regarding utopian scholarship. Therefore, even if we cannot claim to have contacted a representative sample of utopian scholars, which in practice would be very difficult,
we did receive feedback from individuals who have a comprehensive and representative knowledge of utopian literature. Overall, the final list of 60 items (appendix pp 9–12) that was included in exploratory factor analysis incorporated the expert feedback that can be summarised as follows.
SDG=Sustainable Development Goal.
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