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.

可持续性转型研究越来越多地从机构和个体参与者的角度来解释复杂的系统变化。本文介绍了转型框架的领域，以研究在 2020/2021 年冬季采访的 21 名荷兰农民如何以及为何将其商业模式转变为可持续发展。这个框架由三个领域组成：个人（价值观和世界观）、政治（制度）和实践（日常结果）。我们的结果表明，领域之间的相互作用蕴藏着最大的变革潜力，同时也存在最大的障碍，特别是当所有三个领域相交时。我们还确定了对转型具有重要意义的个体演员的个人特征。