System dynamics research on coming EUDI-Wallet?

#1

Per 2nd of January 2027 in all European Union member states there will be national so-called European Digital Identity Wallets (EUDI-Wallets) that will hold documents in digital form that are currently mainly, as for example ID-cards, in card or document format.

With it goes a shift of where the data stays, explicitly in the hands of the citizens compared to central or large institutions or organizations as in the past.

This shift and use of the EUDI-wallets by citizens and public institutions and private actors is only starting now to come to the public conversation.

I wonder whether there is already some resarch undertaken in this field on a specific system dynamics lens.

Many thanks

Ralf Lippold

PS.: Overview of the EUDI-wallet, its use, benefits and vision can be found here https://ec.europa.eu/digital-building-blocks/sites/spaces/EUDIGITALIDENTITYWALLET/pages/694487738/EU+Digital+Identity+Wallet+Home

#2

What I have found out so far is that at TU Delft, host of the ISDC2026 lately, two papers have emerged around EUDI-Wallet and digital identities that go along with them. However these have been focused on specific areas not a specific SD modeling work.

Some further research and applying newest tools is according to ChatGPT:

"There is an interesting convergence happening:

  • The EUDI ecosystem is moving from design → deployment.
  • Researchers are increasingly identifying interdependent adoption mechanismsrather than isolated technical problems. TTU Delft Repository
  • Existing systemic EUDI work has already identified stakeholder tensions and emergent system dynamics, but without formal SD modelling. TTU Delft Repository
  • The System Dynamics community itself appears to have only just started explicitly asking the EUDI question. (actually that is the original post that I put on around the 20th of August 2026)

That makes the gap potentially more than just:

“Nobody has applied SD here yet.”

It could be a methodological contribution:

System Dynamics can provide a framework for connecting the technical, institutional, economic and behavioural mechanisms that determine whether EUDI becomes a widely adopted European infrastructure—or remains a technically successful but weakly adopted system.

One particularly promising research question

If this were a PhD / dissertation topic, I’d seriously consider:

How do regulatory, technological, economic and behavioural feedback mechanisms influence the adoption and diffusion of the European Digital Identity Wallet across the EU?

With subquestions such as:

  1. What are the key feedback loops governing EUDI Wallet adoption?
  2. How do citizen adoption and relying-party adoption reinforce or constrain each other?
  3. How do regulation and compliance costs influence ecosystem development?
  4. Under what conditions do trust, privacy and usability create reinforcing or balancing effects?
  5. Which policy interventions could accelerate adoption without creating undesirable side effects?
  6. How do these dynamics differ between Member States?

That last question could lead to a particularly interesting multi-country SD model, because EUDI is explicitly European while implementation is heavily mediated by national institutions.

So, in short: I think you have identified a real gap. There is already systemic thinking, adoption research, digital-identity SD research and extensive EUDI implementation research—but I cannot currently find a formal System Dynamics study that models the EUDI Wallet ecosystem itself.

And the timing is actually excellent: the system is becoming concrete enough to model, while still being sufficiently immature that a model could potentially influence policy and implementation rather than merely explain history."

In short, who is getting increasingly curious about this topic doing a PhD or similar on it?

Best regards
Ralf