From Governance to Circular Food Supply Chains
PhD candidate: Arjun Chaudhuri
The transition towards circular food supply chains requires firms to reduce resource losses and environmental impacts while maintaining operational and economic performance. However, firms operate under different combinations of regulatory pressure, economic incentives, transition costs, and market conditions. As a result, governance interventions do not always lead to the same organisational responses. Understanding how these factors influence firm decisions, the prioritisation of circular actions, and their longer-term performance is therefore important for supporting the transition towards more circular food systems.
This PhD research investigates how governance mechanisms and decision-support approaches can facilitate firm-level transitions towards Circular Food Supply Chains (CFS), with a particular focus on the Netherlands. The research combines environmental assessment, multi-criteria decision support, empirical modelling, and behavioural simulation. It first applies Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to identify environmental hotspots and translate environmental evidence into actionable information for firms. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methods are then used to support the prioritisation of circular strategies by considering the relative importance of decision criteria and their interdependencies.
The research then examines how governance conditions influence firms' transition towards circularity. Survey data are analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) to investigate relationships between Regulatory Pressure (RP), Green Economic Incentives (GEI), Perceived Regulatory Costs (CER-P), Circular Food Supply Chain performance (CFS) and Firm Improvement Performance (FIP). This empirical analysis helps identify how different governance mechanisms, incentives, and perceived costs shape organisational responses and circular performance.
The empirical relationships are subsequently incorporated into a Behavioural Simulation System (BSS), drawing on Agent-Based Modelling (ABM) principles, to investigate how firms may adapt their decisions over time. The simulation considers bounded decision-making, changing incentives and regulatory pressures, delays, feedback effects, and interactions between firms. This enables the project to move beyond static relationships and explore how different governance conditions may influence circular transition pathways over longer time horizons.
The project contributes to research on circular supply chains, sustainability governance, and decision support by connecting environmental evidence, structured decision-making, observed firm behaviour and dynamic simulation within a coherent research framework. In practical terms, the research seeks to provide policymakers and businesses with a better understanding of which circular interventions should be prioritised, how firms respond to different combinations of regulation and economic incentives, and how these responses can support sustained environmental and organisational improvements.
Start date | 01-04-2024 |
Funding | TBB Sector Plan |
Supervisors | Devrim Murat Yazan and Luca Fraccascia |
