Professor Lucia Reisch is Guest Editor for the Journal of Consumer Policy

Research on sustainable consumption in general and on consumer policies in particular has rarely made use of systems perspectives to date. Sustainable consumption has mostly been discussed in terms of changes in individual awareness, behaviour and consumer choices, development of societal practices, implementation of corporate strategies and as market phenomenon. Although it is broadly accepted that individual consumer behaviour is embedded in multiple contexts, such as social groups and milieus, institutions, sociocultural norms, sociotechnical and socio-spatial systems; complexity theory and systems thinking approaches are comparably rare and publications are scattered across communities and academic journals.

This special issue aims to introduce a systems thinking view to the scientific debate on sustainable consumption policies. This new perspective will offer more effective ways of dealing with complex situations, provide tools to work with different world views and paradigms, give proper attention to properties of systems that emerge unexpectedly, and help identify leverage points for policy interventions derived from a dynamic and holistic approach