This study explores the adoption of circular supply chain practices in China’s textile industry, a sector that accounts for over half of global output and has high carbon emissions. It differentiates the effects of external policy pressure and internal corporate capacity on practice implementation under pre-enforcement regulations. By integrating the STOPE framework and Innovation Resistance Theory, this paper identifies adoption drivers and barriers using PLS-SEM analysis on data from 258 firms across four Chinese provinces. The results show that internal strengths, including strategy, technology, organization, and human resources, act as key enablers. By contrast, external policies such as the EU Ecodesign for Sustainable Products Regulation and China’s dual-carbon targets, alongside regulatory, financial, cultural and industrial barriers, exert negligible effects. This study first applies the combined STOPE-IRT model to research on China’s textile circular supply chain. It extends sustainability theories to pre-enforcement contexts beyond developed economies and offers a reusable research framework for emerging economies. The findings fill gaps in the literature on contextual heterogeneity and innovation mechanisms. They provide practical implications for firms and policymakers to optimize internal capacity building and supportive regulations, accelerating sustainable circular industrial transformation.
Gao et al. (Tue,) studied this question.