TY - JOUR
T1 - Assessment of symmetries and asymmetries on barriers to circular economy adoption in the construction industry towards zero waste
T2 - A survey of international experts
AU - Oluleye, Benjamin I.
AU - Chan, Daniel W.M.
AU - Olawumi, Timothy O.
AU - Saka, Abdullahi B.
N1 - Funding Information:
Further, within the organizational barriers category, some barriers were highly prioritized, but with no significant difference in their mean comparison. These underlying obstacles and their corresponding ranks (in bracket) include inadequate organizational effort in the development of a circular business model (ranked first by developing and developed countries, the fragmented nature of BCI and its supply chain network (9th and 14th), and lack of top management support and leadership toward circular design (15th and 12th). Since these underlying barriers also have no significant difference in their mean comparison, it connotes that the barriers hamper developing and developed countries equally on CE adoption. These findings corroborate Oluleye et al. [3] that most underlying barriers to CE have a similar level of effect on CE in any nation globally, thus a global policy to avert them is imperative.Although regulatory barriers classification to CE in BCI is ranked equally by experts in developing and developed countries, the impact of the barriers is prominent in developing countries relative to developed countries based on the FSE results and the test of significance difference conducted. This implies a more pressing need for effective regulation that supports CE in developing countries' BCI. A significant difference also exists in the underlying barrier mean comparison. For instance, lack of standards on the quality of refurbished and remanufactured products is ranked 11th and 18th by developing and developed experts respectively with mean values of 3.98 and 3.58. As such there was a significant difference between the two-group supported at ρ-value of 0.002 and, a Z-value of −3.025. Although the mean scores were quite significant for the two groups, however, it is more dominant in the developing countries which implies a more pressing need for the promotion of standard and quality of refurbished construction materials in the developing countries. Liu et al. [22], posited that quality assurance standards should be imposed by the regulatory agencies to enable CE in developing countries.At a global level, this study revealed that the generic barriers that require the most attention are organizational-related. This barrier also shows the same level of impact in developing and developed countries. Therefore, a fundamental requirement of global organisations is to develop and ensure effective policies such as mandating BCI stakeholders’ commitment to the development and modification of circular business models globally to create, deliver, and capture value in CE without wasting materials and toward zero waste. Besides, promulgated government policies that would enhance BCI and supply chain members' support circular design must be put in place globally. Further, the capacities of stakeholders within the organisations should be improved in circular construction projects to enable an accelerated global CE execution in BCI.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier Ltd
PY - 2023/1/15
Y1 - 2023/1/15
N2 - This study evaluates simultaneously the symmetries and asymmetries on the classification of barriers to circular economy (CE) adoption in the building construction industry (BCI) of developing and developed economies. This is crucial because the vagueness of the impacts of CE barriers in extant studies affects encyclopaedic and specific CE policy formulation. Consequently, feedbacks from 140 CE experts across 39 developing and developed economies were analysed. Fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) method was deployed to objectively determine the significant impacts of the barriers, whereas the Mann-Whitney U test was applied to identify significant differences in experts' opinions between the two economies. The FSE results indicated that organizational, information technology, and infrastructure and logistics barriers are the most critical to global CE adoption. The Mann-Whitney U test reveals a significant difference in the experts’ perspectives between developing and developed economies on regulatory, information technology, and economic and market barriers. Therefore, they are perceived as specific barriers as they impact CE adoption in BCI differently across the two economies. However, infrastructure and logistics, and organizational barriers are classified as general barriers. The findings of this study underscored the contextuality of barriers to CE adoption in BCI and demonstrated the need for generic and specific policy development. Also, the significance indices of the classification of the barriers using FSE method serve as an allocative function that will help policymakers and stakeholders allocate requisite resources to the most profound barriers towards achieving global systemic circularity and zero construction waste.
AB - This study evaluates simultaneously the symmetries and asymmetries on the classification of barriers to circular economy (CE) adoption in the building construction industry (BCI) of developing and developed economies. This is crucial because the vagueness of the impacts of CE barriers in extant studies affects encyclopaedic and specific CE policy formulation. Consequently, feedbacks from 140 CE experts across 39 developing and developed economies were analysed. Fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) method was deployed to objectively determine the significant impacts of the barriers, whereas the Mann-Whitney U test was applied to identify significant differences in experts' opinions between the two economies. The FSE results indicated that organizational, information technology, and infrastructure and logistics barriers are the most critical to global CE adoption. The Mann-Whitney U test reveals a significant difference in the experts’ perspectives between developing and developed economies on regulatory, information technology, and economic and market barriers. Therefore, they are perceived as specific barriers as they impact CE adoption in BCI differently across the two economies. However, infrastructure and logistics, and organizational barriers are classified as general barriers. The findings of this study underscored the contextuality of barriers to CE adoption in BCI and demonstrated the need for generic and specific policy development. Also, the significance indices of the classification of the barriers using FSE method serve as an allocative function that will help policymakers and stakeholders allocate requisite resources to the most profound barriers towards achieving global systemic circularity and zero construction waste.
KW - Barriers
KW - Building construction industry
KW - Circular economy
KW - Fuzzy synthetic evaluation
KW - Zero waste
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85143679794&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109885
DO - 10.1016/j.buildenv.2022.109885
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85143679794
SN - 0360-1323
VL - 228
JO - Building and Environment
JF - Building and Environment
M1 - 109885
ER -