The Relevance of the Circular Economy for Climate Change: An Exploration through the Theory of Change Approach

Manav Khanna, Natalia Marzia Gusmerotti and Marco Frey
Additional contact information
Manav Khanna: Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, 56127 Pisa, Italy
Natalia Marzia Gusmerotti: Institute of Management, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, 56127 Pisa, Italy

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 7, 1-18

Abstract: The relevance of the circular economy for climate change is still a developing area of research that needs to be explored. This paper aims to provide an overview of the relevance of the circular economy for climate change through the theory of change approach framework. For this purpose, we analysed 96 articles from the Scopus and WoS databases in the “Arts and Humanities, Business, Management and Accounting, Economics, Econometrics and Finance and Social Sciences,” with the keywords “Circular economy” and “Climate Change”. Our analysis shows that 87% of the reviewed articles showed a strong relevance of the circular economy for climate change. However, most of the articles focused on the mitigation aspect of climate change. The circular economy is widely practised in countries such as the United Kingdom, Italy, Belgium, and China. Our main theoretical contribution is in developing a logical framework through the theory of change, which is a novel approach in social science research apart from monitoring and evaluation studies.

Keywords: circular economy; climate change; theory of change (ToC); eco-innovation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3991/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3991/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:7:p:3991-:d:781430

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().