Linking circular economy and digitalisation technologies: A systematic literature review of past achievements and future promises

Abstract

• The review and synthesises the extant literature streams on the circular economy (CE) and digitalisation technologies. • A plethora of research is organised around the barriers and enablers to digitalisation-led CE. • The review organises literature around four key themes where artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) are increasing prominence for CE transition. • A viable systems-based framework is developed to depict the complex system involved in realising circularity benefits. • Product-service systems (PSS) is identified as a dominant theme for circular business model studies. The circular economy (CE) has the potential to capitalise upon emerging digital technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the Internet of things (IoT), amongst others. These digital technologies combined with business model innovation are deemed to provide solutions to myriad problems in the world, including those related to circular economy transformation. Given the societal and practical importance of CE and digitalisation, last decade has witnessed a significant increase in academic publication on these topics. Therefore, this study aims to capture the essence of the scholarly work at the intersection of the CE and digital technologies. A detailed analysis of the literature based on emerging themes was conducted with a focus on illuminating the path of CE implementation. The results reveal that IoT and AI play a key role in the transition towards the CE. A multitude of studies focus on barriers to digitalisation-led CE transition and highlight policy-related issues, the lack of predictability, psychological issues and information vulnerability as some important barriers. In addition, product-service system (PSS) has been acknowledged as an important business model innovation for achieving the digitalisation enabled CE. Through a detailed assessment of the existing literature, a viable systems-based framework for digitalisation enabled CE has been developed which show the literature linkages amongst the emerging research streams and provide novel insights regarding the realisation of CE benefits.