Exploring the Evolution of Sustainability Paradigms: From Linear to Circular Economy Models

Abstract As a response to the urgent environmental degradation and depletion of resources, this article analyzes the historical evolution from linear to circular economy models as a response for achieving sustainability. Tracing back to sustainable forest use proposed in 17th-century and evolving towards modern circular economy principles, there is a paradigm shift of decoupling economic growth from resource consumption. Moving through the landscape of sustainability, the paper criticizes the linear economy model that originated during industrialization period and was incapable of addressing sustainability. Key milestones, such as sustainable development, closed-loop-systems, and biomimicry, demonstrate the journey to current business models. An extensive literature review proves the interdisciplinary importance of circular economy research, exploring domains such as Sustainability Science, Management, and Bioengineering. The present research combines bibliometric analysis and systematic review on articles published between 2000 and 2023. These methods were chosen to assess the main directions of research for development of circular economy models, and recent trends. Research is centered around dynamics and trajectory of scholarly outputs on the topic, mainly those published in the past five years. A sharp rise in the number of publications regarding circular economy models is found, characterized by three notable inflections in 2017, 2018 and 2021. Two pivotal articles emerge as influential contributions. The interdisciplinary landscape of circular economy research is observed, covering diverse research areas such as Supply Chain and Logistics, Bioengineering, or Social Psychology. The cooccurrence analysis reveals 6 thematic clusters for which we propose a conceptual framework. The clusters are: environmental impact, sustainable development, interdisciplinary connections (niche sciences), circular supply chain, climate change, and IT-centric approaches that have emerged in research in the past five years. Insights from recent trends provide valuable guidance to researchers, professionals, and policymakers by using an interdisciplinary lens in the transition to a circular economy.