Mapping Stakeholder Perspectives for Sustainability Transitions: The Case of Lithium-ion Battery Recycling

Lithium-ion battery (LIB) recycling has become a key area where sustainability goals and circular economy ambitions meet practical challenges. While research often focuses on regulatory or technological solutions, real progress depends on stakeholder action and alignment. This paper combines a literature review and a stakeholder survey (n = 26) to map risks, opportunities, barriers, and interventions, formulating a roadmap for sustainable LIB recycling from the stakeholder perspective. The literature identified 27 opportunities, 21 risks, 32 barriers, and 23 enablers across strategic, operational, institutional, cultural, and technical domains. The study confirms that an implementation gap persists between ambition and practice. Stakeholders know the opportunities, but structural barriers, limited resources, and insufficient attention to cultural enablers dampen progress. The barrier–intervention mapping and the derived roadmap show that interventions must be sequenced strategically: securing resources first, then building data infrastructures, strengthening know-how, to finally reduce complexity. The findings show that sustainability progress depends less on technical capability than on sound resource management, reliable data, and institutional support offering a transferable framework to close implementation gaps as presented in this study and supports future research on how stakeholder alignment can accelerate sustainable transitions across industries.