Investigating Barriers Toward the Implementation of Circular Economy: A Fuzzy CRITIC Approach

The concept of circular economy (CE) attracts the attention of industries and academia; however, the implementation of CE faces many barriers. Therefore, the primary purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize significant barriers toward the implementation of CE. In order to accomplish these objectives, the barriers of CE implementation are identified through an extensive literature review and finalized through experts’ inputs. After finalizing the barriers, we appropriately applied a fuzzy CRITIC (CRiteria Importance Through Intercriteria Correlation) approach to prioritize the barriers. Further, the identified barriers are analyzed using the Pareto rule. The results suggest that laws and regulations-related barriers and management-related barriers are the most critical barriers toward the implementation of a circular economy. Further, the lack of environmental laws and regulations, insufficient financial resources, lack of financial incentives and a higher cost related to recycled materials in the supply chain are the most significant barriers in industries. The novelty of this paper is that the identified barriers toward the implementation of CE are generic as well as industry-specific.