Résumé
hifting sociotechnical systems towards sustainability requires getting local stakeholders to cooperate and design the most relevant technical and social changes. Collective management initiatives based on stakeholder dialogue are widely studied in literature, mostly supported by ex post lessons obtained from successful case studies, with little consideration for the initiation stage. To fill this important gap, this study analyzes stakeholders’ interests for dialogue before the action starts. To this end, we use the concept of plausible promise: the discourse formulated by the initiating actor to engage collective action. We have developed an original methodology to conceive and assess plausible promises in a situation where collective management is of great potential interest, but not yet being implemented. The case study concerns the Plaine de Versailles, where recycling organic waste could be significantly improved by collective management, i.e. used in agriculture as a substitute for other resources according to the industrial symbiosis principles. We carried out simulations with 19 key local stakeholders who were asked to evaluate their interest in possible collective management initiatives represented by nine plausible promises. Our results indicate that non-specific plausible promises may be sufficient to get stakeholders involved. The performativity of more specific promises depended on their time perspective; for instance, providing many details on collective management in a long-term perspective proved to be counter-productive. We conclude that convincing the relevant actors to join a dialogue may not require an important level of knowledge on unsustainable situations. However, such knowledge remains a prerequisite for the initiating actor to design his/her project.