The lifecycle impact and value capture of circular business models in the built environment

Rebecka Lundgren, Riikka Kyrö and Stefan Olander

Construction Management and Economics, 2024, vol. 42, issue 6, 527-544

Abstract: Circular economy (CE) has been of utmost interest in the industry and research community in the preceding years. However, CE is still a nascent research field in the built environment context. As technological advances within CE are slowing, the incorporation of business models into the concept is deemed important to achieve the necessary transition. Circular business models within the built environment should take a holistic perspective and a lifecycle optimization approach. The research aim is twofold, firstly, we aim to contribute to the assessment of impacts of CE business models. Secondly, we aim to establish how real estate development organizations can optimize value capture from adaptive reuse projects. We engage in an in-depth mixed methods case study assessing and comparing two adaptation scopes of a former textile factory to offices. The minor scope includes basic measures to bring the building up to standard, whilst the major scope includes the same, with the addition of space efficiency measures, extended building services, onsite energy production and various circular activities. We find that the major scope consequently captures more of the identified value propositions of the organization than the minor scope. We conclude that more circular activities do not necessarily lead to better environmental performance, however, may lead to higher profit and social gain. The study contributes to existing knowledge of impact assessments, and highlights the complexity of balancing environmental, social and economic impact in the built environment context. The assessment framework may be used by real estate developers prior to investments decisions.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01446193.2023.2279743 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:conmgt:v:42:y:2024:i:6:p:527-544

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RCME20

DOI: 10.1080/01446193.2023.2279743

Access Statistics for this article

Construction Management and Economics is currently edited by Will Hughes

More articles in Construction Management and Economics from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().