Making the circular economy digital or the digital economy circular? Empirical evidence from the European region

Nguyen Thi Hong Nham and Le Thanh Ha

Technology in Society, 2022, vol. 70, issue C

Abstract: This paper answers the question of whether digitalization enables the circular economy or circularity promotes the digital transformation process. We use six diverse measures to reflect the circularity of European countries: municipal waste, the number of circularity patents, circular material usage, recycle waste rate, recycling biowaste rate, and recycling e-waste rate. In order to assess digital businesses, we use four measures of e-Commerce – online selling, e-Commerce sales, e-Commerce web sales, and e-Commerce turnover – and two measures of e-Business: customer relation management usage and cloud usage. We use user-centricity and key enablers to assess digital public services. Our estimation results reveal that the initial development of digitalization can enable European countries to transit to the circular economy. However, the overdevelopment of digitalization hinders this process. By contrast, we present a nonlinear relationship between digitalization and circularity, suggesting that digitalization can positively impact the circularity level after reaching a certain level.

Keywords: The circular economy; Digital public services; Digital business; European countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C33 G21 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:70:y:2022:i:c:s0160791x22001646

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102023

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