Sustainable market transformation: A refined framework for analyzing causal loops in transitions to sustainability.

• Little previous literature includes a systemic analysis of cause-and-effect (causal) loops that trigger collective market behavior facing sustainability issues. • Based on logical argumentation, the article proposes a framework that integrates market-related concepts like competitive advantage or first movers in transition theories. • Next to the government, this article conceptualizes how companies, financial institutions, knowledge institutions and NGOs can take leadership for market transformation processes. • The framework allows market actors to know and fulfill their individual responsibilities in the proposed four phases of a sustainable market transformation. This article proposes a refined conceptual framework to understand and act upon sustainable market transformation processes. Currently, there is a knowledge gap between government-oriented approaches to transition management and market formation that is addressed in evolutionary economics. Consequently, this article builds upon literature in the field of evolutionary economics, systems theory and transition management, to conceptualize the causal loops which trigger collective behavior facing sustainability issues. Furthermore, it proposes how these causal loops can be altered by interventions of actors in four sequential transition phases and illustrates what kind of interventions are most effective to accelerate a sustainable market transformation process. Promising avenues for future empirical studies based on the suggested conceptual framework, are the investigation of how the concepts of sustainable market transformation are applied in different market contexts and the evaluation of whether the applied interventions actually alter the underlying causal loops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]