Economic Impact of Circular Economy
Based on representative survey data, the economic effects of the circular economy will be analysed and the extent to which these differ from region to region will be examined.
Factsheet
- Schools involved Business School
- Institute(s) Institute for Sustainable Business
- Funding organisation Others
- Duration (planned) 01.02.2024 - 30.09.2025
- Head of project Prof. Dr. Rahel Meili
- Keywords circular economy, status report, regional development
Situation
We will only succeed in making a comprehensive change to CE if it is also economically worthwhile for companies to switch. If it turns out that CE increases the economic performance of companies, then the existing incentives and market forces will be sufficient to spread the concept further. If, on the other hand, the effects are negative, i.e. if circular economy activities reduce the economic performance of companies, companies will probably not be willing to make further efforts towards the circular economy on their own initiative. Accordingly, an adjustment of the framework conditions would have to be considered.
Course of action
Since the effects can vary relatively widely between individual companies, a broad sample is required. Furthermore, a simple correlation analysis is usually not sufficient, as performance is influenced by many other factors besides the CE. We will therefore use well-founded multivariate regression models for the analysis. The economic performance of the companies will be considered as the dependent variable (e.g. productivity, sales, ...); the aim is to identify the drivers of economic performance. As control variables in these models, we will control for various market and firm characteristics such as firm size, competitive intensity, industry affiliation, etc. The aim is to identify the drivers of economic performance. Of particular interest, however, is the role of CE activities. With the help of descriptive information, we can explicitly examine which CE activities influence the economic performance of companies and how. Since these effects can always correlate with company and market characteristics such as company size or industry affiliation, it is crucial for this analysis to use such multivariate models and not just perform descriptive analyzes. The identification of regional differences is particularly important in this analysis in order to be able to derive regional policy conclusions.
