A systems thinking framework integrating circular behaviour research

Consumer goods industries are increasingly incorporating circular practices (e.g. recycling and reuse) into their offerings to reduce environmental impact and combat the issue of waste. The success of these offerings depends on consumers significantly changing their behaviour across the journey of purchase, use and disposal. There are a number of unique features that demarcate circular behaviour from other types of consumer behaviour, such as the fact that consumers must operate within a system of interconnected elements to enable resources to flow continuously. However, research to date has applied methodological approaches and behaviour models in a way that only addresses a fraction of the picture. In moving beyond this reductive framing of circular behaviour, a systems thinking framework is introduced, integrating circular behaviour research. The framework is applied to a case example and preliminary findings are presented, which highlight the capability of the proposed framework to explain broad and deep data on circular consumer behaviour. This can be used to pinpoint specific problems in an interconnected chain of behaviours, understand how system elements can cause unintended behavioural consequences, highlight barriers and opportunities to circularity and develop more informed intervention strategies.