*3.2. Stakeholder Engagement and the CEDaCI Project*

Stakeholder engagement has already proved beneficial to many sectors because it clarifies communication and the exchange of ideas and helps all parties to develop a thorough understanding of issues, alternative perspectives, and potential solutions; it also strengthens the resources of the involved individuals and groups by increasing awareness, confidence, skills, and co-operation, and it improves sustainability of the initiatives by increasing the quality of decisions and their acceptance among stakeholders [31]. The reasons for its success as a strategy are associated with motivation and fundamental human psychology: engagement has been defined as the sum of supportive conditions for authentic expression; it is motivated by either cognitive factors (such as a rational work goal), emotional factors (a state of mind that affects behaviour) [32], or motivated by a combination of cognition and emotions [33]. These drivers tend to vary according to role, so consumers are motivated by emotional factors such as empathy, gratitude, and trust [34] while stakeholders are motivated by more functional and rational (cognitive) factors [35], which may be evidenced as goal-directed behaviours such as accomplishing a predetermined purpose [36].

Stakeholder engagement was seen as critical to the CEDaCI project to enable and ensure a whole systems approach to the challenge, via knowledge exchange between the project team members and stakeholders and among stakeholders from the various sub-sectors. However, the history and evolution of and behaviours across the Data Centre Industry meant that there was a risk of non-engagement. The leadership team believed they could reduce this risk to a manageable level by stimulating interest through first- and second-hand contacts and by meeting potential participants in person at trade and other events, although this is a time and resource intensive activity.

The structure of the DCI means that members are often simultaneously stakeholders and consumers (i.e., they are involved in delivery and procurement and use of products and services) and therefore, they are motivated by both cognitive and emotional factors. In the context of CEDaCI, for example, as stakeholders, their eventual goal is to increase sustainability of the DCI and build a Circular Economy; as consumers, they meet the team partners and colleagues from across the industry, and by sharing experience and knowledge, they develop empathy and trust.

In order to reach and engage as many actors as possible during and after the project three types of activity were developed and employed:

