Abstract for: System Dynamics for Policy Mix Assessment: A Systematic Review and Framework for Feedback-Loop-Informed Analysis

Sustainability transitions require coordinated policy mixes combining instruments, strategies, and governance processes. However, existing policy mix assessment approaches often analyze these elements separately and remain largely static, limiting their ability to capture feedbacks, delays, and interactions. This creates a gap in understanding how policy mixes evolve dynamically and influence transition outcomes over time. This study conducts a systematic literature review of System Dynamics (SD) applications in policy analysis, using structured searches in Scopus and Web of Science. A coding framework is applied to examine how SD captures policy instruments, processes, and feedback mechanisms. Based on this synthesis, a conceptual SD framework is developed to support feedback-loop-informed policy mix assessment. Preliminary results indicate that SD is widely used to analyze policy instruments and system behavior, but rarely integrates policy processes and instrument interactions within a unified framework. Existing applications often capture partial dynamics, overlooking cross-dimensional feedbacks. The findings highlight opportunities to extend SD toward more comprehensive, feedback-driven assessments of policy mixes. The study suggests that feedback-loop-informed SD approaches can complement existing policy mix assessment methods by revealing reinforcing and balancing dynamics shaping policy effectiveness. This has practical implications for designing adaptive policy strategies and supports future research on integrating policy processes and instruments within dynamic modeling frameworks for sustainability transitions. Only used for text refinement