Spheres of transformation: exploring personal, political and practical drivers of farmer agency and behaviour change in the Netherlands

Abstract

Sustainability transitions research increasingly engages with agency and individual actor perspectives to explain complex system change. This paper introduces the spheres of transformation framework to study how and why 21 Dutch farmers, interviewed in the winter of 2020/2021, transform their business models towards sustainability. This framework is composed of three spheres: the personal (values and worldviews), the political (institutions), and the practical (everyday outcomes). Our results show that the interactions between spheres harbour the greatest potential for transformation as well as the greatest barriers, especially when all three spheres intersect. We furthermore identify individual actors’ personal characteristics that are significant in transformations. We conclude that the spheres of transformation framework is a suitable middle-range framework for the study of agency and behaviour in sustainability transitions that bridges between local and global transition models, and that policymakers and researchers should consider all three spheres when engaging individual actors in efforts to make sociotechnical systems more sustainable.