Emerging Associates of the Circular Economy: Analysing Interactions and Trends by a Mixed Methods Systematic Review

Abstract

Circular Economy (CE) frameworks augmented multi-dimensional research, including definitions, principles, indicators, history, limitations, enablers, and allied issues. Rethinking the designing strategies requires the exploration of CE associates and their functioning as companions for amplification through multiple suggestions, highlighting the interactions with the overall CE system towards sustainability. This paper focuses on how CE literature concentrates on premeditated areas and solution approaches. A lack of deterministic manifestations critically limits the interpretation and application of CE concepts. The paper contributes to the CE theoretical and practical understanding by for the first time outlining the CE associates, their connotation, progression, positioning in architecture, and their current state. These associates support individualization of a CE concept. The coherently applied methodology attempts to reduce the knowledge gap by following a systematic quantitative literature review process to screen 76 articles and 122 CE definitions, referencing one decade of literature. Application of comprehensive morphological mining facilitated the extraction of CE associates and later analysis. On application of Bibliometric Analysis, Text Analysis, Semantic Analysis, and Relation Mapping to the literature, 49 associates emerged. They were further validated by application of Content Analysis and Weighted Average Priority Ranking on extracted article content and definitions for deriving the most prominent associates. Subsequently, Association Rules Data Mining and K-Means Clustering were deployed in exploring the relations, ranking, and significance of CE associates. The findings consistently state that business actions (virtualize, exchange); sustainability pillars (society); and R strategies (refuse, refill, and repurpose) are unexplored CE associates, whereas Business, Economics, Environment, Measurement, Product, Industry, Resource, System, Waste, and Recycle are the most explored associates of the CE ecosystem.