ABSTRACT Eco‐Industrial Parks (EIPs) are critical infrastructure for transitioning to sustainable production and consumption patterns, enabling resource efficiency through industrial symbiosis. However, the success of these circular ecosystems depends heavily on strategic location planning that balances conflicting economic, environmental, and social‐based factors such as environmental risk, costs, public acceptance, and so on. This study proposes a novel hybrid multi‐criteria decision‐making (MCDM) framework to identify the optimal location for an EIP under a circular economy paradigm. A comprehensive evaluation system comprising five main criteria and 20 sub‐criteria was developed based on literature and expert consultation. The Best‐Worst Method (BWM) was utilized to determine criteria weights, revealing that economic and environmental factors are the most influential drivers for sustainable site selection. Subsequently, the Intuitionistic Fuzzy Measurement Alternatives and Ranking according to Compromise Solution (IF‐MARCOS) method was applied to rank candidate sites in Gaziantep, Türkiye, handling the uncertainty inherent in expert judgments. The results identify the Gaziantep Free Zone as the optimal location due to its superior industrial infrastructure and synergy potential. By integrating circular economy principles directly into the site selection process, this framework provides policymakers and industrial planners with a robust decision‐support tool to foster cleaner production and resilient industrial networks. Also, the outcomes prove economic and environmental factors over social and innovation criteria in the context of EIP site selection. This favors a potential limitation in present policy tactics, where immediate economic viability and environmental concerns may dominate the essential for community participation and support for long‐term innovation for sustainability.
Ayyildiz et al. (Wed,) studied this question.