Connecting the dots in green food purchasing behavior literature: A system thinking approach for systematic literature reviews

Recent years have been characterized by an ever-growing interest in consumers' be-havior while purchasing green food products. Although existing research has pro-duced a great number of papers on this topic, the knowledge generated in the fieldappears fragmented and, in certain cases, ambiguous. The main reasons can be tracedback to the lack of reference frameworks that clarify the most used concepts, thusproviding a shared language in this research domain. Despite other literature reviewsthat have been carried out on the domain of green food purchasing behavior, theseworks mainly rely on narrative summaries and qualitative analyses, which can over-look the complexity and interdependencies inherent in this research domain. Thecomplexity of interconnected factors within this research domain poses challengesin effectively understanding and representing the underlying dynamics. To overcomethese limitations, this paper proposes the use of a System Thinking based approachas a valuable method to provide a complete view of dynamics occurring in the greenconsumption behavior domain. In particular, we propose the integration of causal loopdiagrams as a powerful visual tool to augment the conventional Systematic LiteratureReview process to provide a view at a glance of dynamics and capture the complex in-terdependencies occurring in a specific research domain. We carried out a systematicliterature review by analyzing a set of 67 papers. We find nine relevant themes in theinvestigated research domain. Besides a descriptive picture of the scientific activity,a map of the main dynamics occurring in green food purchasing behavior has beenprovided