Jeroen Struben

Successfully transforming our societies towards a desirable sustainable future requires finding alternative strategies to currently favored but insufficient and often unjust supply-side and technology-based solutions. I examine this problem focusing on consumer lifestyle changes considering the role of intergenerational inequalities, using a process of integrative conceptual modeling, followed by computational modeling and simulation to analyze how different interventions affect transformation dynamics. Characterizing key mechanisms, involving factors as population-segment specific willingness to change lifestyle, social influence, and capital for lifestyle supporting infrastructure, yields a system of multiple positive feedback loops giving rise to tipping points in lifestyles. Simulation results show that single pronged efforts targeting sustainable lifestyles directly, such as those aiming to galvanize social influence among the younger populations have limited impact as long as ongoing capital deployments—mostly controlled by older populations—do not support these lifestyles. However, granting younger populations greater control over capital deployment decisions powerfully complements such efforts. Taken together, my findings demonstrate that facilitating and accelerating just sustainability transformations requires multi-pronged interventions that combine behavioral and systems levers and that are firmly grounded in an understanding of the complex dynamics resulting from deeply intertwined and multilevel demand-, supply-, and inequality-related realms. Methodologically, this paper offers an approach for analyzing the multiple-equilibria nature of sustainability transformations, and social tipping points specifically. Such approaches are critical for identifying pathways through which more-affected populations can better shape a sustainable future in their terms and for addressing deeply rooted inequalities integral to societal unsustainability.

Achieving food system transformation requires a deep understanding of the market mechanisms that underpin both the social benefits and the externalities of modern development. We examine how market dynamics affect the production and consumption of healthy and equitable diets in North America. Using causal loop diagramming, we show how three market feedback processes (industry capabilities, consumer category considerations, and systems and institutions) both constrain and enable food system transformation. Through behavioral-dynamic computational modeling, we demonstrate the ineffectiveness of isolated social or commercial interventions to achieve equitable access to nutritious foods across populations of varying socioeconomic statuses. Rather, self-sustaining transformations at scale require convergent innovations that bridge individual and collective action across typically siloed sectors, to achieve alignment between commercial, social, and environmental goals and activities. We discuss how this simulation-based analytical framework can inform policy for food system transformation, whether at the local, national, or global level.

Why are organizations and markets slow to transform toward sustainability despite the abundant well‐recognized opportunities it provides? An important subset of the phenomena this question addresses involves decision‐makers recognizing the existence of opportunities but failing to undertake ambitious, effective, sufficient, or timely action. Building on existing research on capability traps, market formation, and managing sustainability, we focus on the forces constraining organizations from developing the capabilities and market infrastructures required for sustainability transformations. We characterize types of sustainability initiatives and, using causal loop diagramming, visualize structures that enable and constrain how organizations can navigate individually and collectively worse‐before‐better dynamics resulting from uncertain, nonlinear, and delayed returns. Being under day‐to‐day pressures and deeply intertwined within their environment, organizational actors find it difficult to recognize, undertake, maintain, and coordinate necessary efforts internally and externally. We discuss research implications and directions for future research on avoiding these traps and accelerating sustainability transformations. © 2023 The Authors. System Dynamics Review published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of System Dynamics Society.

Collective action is critical for successful market formation. However, relatively little is known about how and under what conditions actors overcome collective action problems to successfully form new markets. Using the benefits of simulation methods, we uncover how collective action problems result from actor resource allocation decisions interacting with each other and how the severity of these problems depends on central market- and actor-related characteristics. Specifically, we show that collective action problems occur when actors undervalue the benefits of market-oriented resource allocation and when actors contribute resources that are imperfectly substitutable. Furthermore, we show that collective action problems occur when actors are embedded in networks with others sharing a similar role in market formation. Collectively, our findings contribute new insights to organization theory regarding collective action and market formation and to strategy on value creation and strategic decision making regarding resource allocation.

It is critical to understand the impact of distinct interventions on the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic. I develop a behavioral dynamic epidemic model for multifaceted policy analysis comprising endogenous virus transmission (from severe or mild/asymptomatic cases), social contacts, and case testing and reporting. Calibration of the system dynamics model to the ongoing outbreak (31 December 2019–15 May 2020) using multiple time series data (reported cases and deaths, performed tests, and social interaction proxies) from six countries (South Korea, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and the United States) informs an explanatory analysis of outbreak responses and postpeak strategies. Specifically, I demonstrate, first, how timing and efforts of testing‐capacity expansion and social‐contact reduction interplay to affect outbreak dynamics and can explain a large share of cross‐country variation in outbreak pathways. Second, absent at‐scale availability of pharmaceutical solutions, postpeak social contacts must remain well below prepandemic values. Third, proactive (targeted) interventions, when complementing general deconfinement readiness, can considerably increase admissible postpeak social contacts.© 2020 System Dynamics Society

It is critical to understand the impact of distinct policy interventions to the ongoing coronavirus disease pandemic. I develop a flexible behavioral, dynamic, and sectorial epidemic policy model comprising both endogenous virus transmission and public health and citizen responses. Applicable to the full epidemic cycle including confinement, deconfinement, and resurgence, the model allows exploring the multivariate impact of distinct policy interventions, including general and targeted testing and social contact reduction efforts. Using a cross-sectional calibration to data on the ongoing coronavirus disease outbreak about reported cases and deaths, tests performed, and social interactions from six countries (South Korea, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, and the United States), I demonstrate how early, rapid, and extensive buildup of testing and social contact reduction efforts interplay to suppress the outbreak. I then use the model to show and quantify limits to the extent of deconfinement and illustrate the critical role of targeted approaches for managing post peak deconfinement and resurgence. To aid necessary public and expert understanding of outbreak control strategies the model is accessible in the form of a web-based management flight simulator.

The rapid decarbonisation of transportation is critical if global efforts to mitigate the worst possible impacts of anthropogenic climate change are to be successful. Transportation is a leading sectoral contributor of greenhouse gas emissions, and demand for transportation continues to grow globally. Alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs) powered by fuels such as electricity, hydrogen, and biofuels promise to mitigate the environmental impacts of automotive transportation, including urban air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. However, multiple barriers to AFV diffusion exist, including low consumer acceptance, high vehicle costs, and a lack of refuelling infrastructure, meaning that sophisticated policies and strategies will be needed to achieve an AFV market transition that is both ecologically and economically sustainable. While more EVs were sold in 2018 than ever before, these sales were the result of aggressive policy support in places such as China and Norway, and it is not clear that EV sales would persist at this level if these policies were removed. In this paper, we present and make freely available a generalised model of AFV diffusion that is flexible for the exploration of these critical policy questions, building on recent AFV diffusion literature from system dynamics and related fields. We demonstrate using illustrative scenarios the fragility of AFV diffusion, with a range of behaviour modes possible depending on the structure of the market and the actions of stakeholders. Finally, we identify a number of contemporary research topics of interest to automotive manufacturers and policymakers that can be addressed using the model.

Transitions research is a new, multi-disciplinary field studying large-scale societal changes, including those towards sustainability. In this chapter we argue that system dynamics methodology and research offer opportunities for transitions research because of (1) its focus on understanding dynamic interactions of actors across realms, (2) its strengths in identifying high-leverage interventions for socio-technical system change and (3) its large body of transition-, management- and sustainability-related work. We discuss specific system dynamics practices and exemplary system dynamics work to show how system dynamics can enrich transitions research. We discuss future opportunities for applying system dynamics approaches to transitions problems.

The heterogeneous distribution of resources tends to reduce collective action problems. In this paper, we examine whether these insights extend to more complex settings of collective action. While perfect substitutability of resources is a fundamental assumption of existing collective action models, many collective causes, particularly those focused on market formation, require resources across distinct actors that are often imperfectly substitutable. We develop a formal model that shows that heterogeneity under conditions of imperfect substitutability actually exacerbates collective action problems. We examine the central mechanisms governing the existence and resolution of collective action dilemmas for complex causes and we identify the conditions under which collective action is more or less challenging. Analyzing the problem in the context of market formation, we explore implications for those settings with heterogeneous social structure. We discuss the implications of our findings for study of colle...

Research Summary : While extant research recognizes the importance of collective action for market formation, it provides little understanding about when and to what extent collective action is important. In this article, we develop a novel theoretical framework detailing what collective action problems and solutions arise in market formation and under what conditions. Our framework centers on the development of market infrastructure with three key factors that influence the nature and extent of collective action problems: perceived returns to contributions, excludability, and contribution substitutability. We apply our framework to diverse market formation contexts and derive a set of attendant propositions. Finally, we show how collective action problems and solutions evolve during market formation efforts and discuss how our framework contributes to strategic management, entrepreneurship, and organization literatures. Managerial Summary : This article lays out the key considerations that players operating in new markets should contemplate when making nontrivial investments in those spaces. As collective action problems can thwart efforts to establish new markets, we ask: When and under what conditions should market players collaborate rather than act independently? And if players collaborate, how should they coordinate to establish a new market? To address these research questions, we develop a novel generalizable framework of collective action in market formation. Our framework assesses the presence and type of collective action problems that hinder market formation and identifies potential solutions tied to those collective action problems.