Exploring the green economy – A systems thinking modelling approach

The green economy (GE) is a very contemporary knowledge area with global research growth and rapid industrial adoption rates. As a knowledge area, the GE is continuously expanding, making it challenging for researchers to identify the latest trends, add to the relevant body of knowledge or forecast the impact technologies in industry. Industrial partners are seeking to adopt new GE concepts and implement GE technological development but find it difficult to identify and quantify relevant information. Systems thinking orientates around the quantification of all contributing factors and can provide structure to expanding research and technological adoption. The key challenge is identifying all the factors, subsystems, and systems in a quantitative approach. Therefore, this research expands on a two-tiered methodology, with the first tier adopting literature to develop expert knowledge in the GE. This expert knowledge is applied in the second-tier analysis to create quantifiable relations between all influencing variables advancing the GE. The results provide for comprehensive insights into all systems currently contributing towards the GE. The results quantify 9 systems with 96 elements. The quantified interaction strength between the systems and their elements on an intra-system and inter-system is provided. The overall aim of the study is to quantify systems of the GE, inclusive of subsystems and their elements. The two-layer research protocol adopted in this study can be used as a foundation for future studies that aim to develop systems models with quantified interactive data.