Information Technology and Digital Sufficiency for Building the Sustainable Circular Economy

Victoria Akberdina, Wadim Strielkowski, Natalia Linder, Sergey Kashirin and Lyudmila Shmeleva
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Victoria Akberdina: Department of Regional Industrial Policy and Economic Security, Institute of Economics of the Urals Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moskovskaya Str. 29, Yekaterinburg 620014, Russia
Natalia Linder: Department of Management and Innovations, Faculty “Higher School of Management”, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Leningradsky Prospekt 49, Moscow 125993, Russia
Sergey Kashirin: Department of Management and Innovations, Faculty “Higher School of Management”, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Leningradsky Prospekt 49, Moscow 125993, Russia
Lyudmila Shmeleva: Department of Management and Innovations, Faculty “Higher School of Management”, Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation, Leningradsky Prospekt 49, Moscow 125993, Russia

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-14

Abstract: Information technologies possess the significant potential to improve the efficiency of resources and optimize energy usage, as well as make a significant contribution to the sustainable circular economy (CE). The concept of digital sufficiency provides a framework for understanding how information technology can be part of significant achievements in the circular economy, especially when embraced by business companies. Moreover, the possibility of the implementation of closed-loop resources has become possible with the development of digital manufacturing technologies. However, the research of establishing the CE in SMEs, especially in fossil-energy-abundant countries, such as the Russian Federation, is quite limited. Our paper fills in this gap by studying the adoption of CE practices as well as the investments for promoting CE in Russian SMEs through such factors as the existence of R&D, bank loans, and access to grants at the national and international level. It achieves this based on the data sample of 314 managers of Russian SMEs. Our results demonstrate that the investment or existence of R&D in SMEs and knowledge of CE as well the governmental funding and access to wider markets all together tend to have a significant and positive effect on implementing and investing into CE in SMEs, while the administrative barriers yield a small but negative effect. These results might be helpful for the relevant stakeholders in order to identify factors catalyzing attention from both the SMEs engaged in CE transitions, as well as help the decision makers wishing to foster the transformation of the SMEs to a circular economy. We can conclude that supporting SMEs (both financially and via increasing their public awareness) to make their own transitions towards CE has a societal effect that can speed up a greener transition and significantly contribute to increasing energy efficiency.

Keywords: information technology; digitalization; circular economy; Internet of Things; SMEs; energy efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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