Fostering the Circular Economy with Blockchain Technology: Insights from a Bibliometric Approach.

The circular economy is an emerging paradigm with important economic, environmental, and societal implications. As the world faces such paradigm shifts, new and radical technologies are urgently needed to enable it; blockchain technology can assist to accomplish the aforementioned circular economy shift given its decentralization and distributiveness principles as well as its smart contract capability. This study represents one of the first attempts to analyze those academic research domains together adopting a science mapping technique. By adopting such approach, the study envisages research challenges, highlights important research gaps, and proposes future paths in the blockchain and circular economy fields. Among the others, key findings show that blockchain technology as a tool for promoting the circular economy has been extensively researched at the micro (i.e., firm) and meso levels (i.e., supply chain) more effort on how blockchain can support the development of circular smart cites and measurement tools for providing information to stakeholders and assisting in policy creation expresses the greatest potential in terms of novel research. Moreover, the research suggests that another possible stream of research might be dealing on how blockchain together with physical technologies (e.g., 3D printing, RFID), can support the transition towards the circular economy.

Exploring waste prevention behaviour through empirical research.

Waste prevention is currently a critical issue, and our research aims to provide a more nuanced view by examining the determinants of individual behaviour when deciding to either purchase a certain item or to extend the life of an owned item through repair or reuse activities. Our research has two main aims: (1) to examine the importance that being aware of consequences and personal norms have in shaping positive attitudes towards waste prevention behaviour; and (2) to explore the relationship between attitudes and perceived behavioural control on waste prevention by testing the mediation effects of perceived behavioural control and waste prevention behaviour. The research is based on 375 questionnaires collected in Pietra Ligure, a municipality located in Northwest Italy. Data were modelled using a structural equation model to test the hypotheses. The findings show that awareness of the consequences is a fundamental driver of waste prevention attitudes while personal norms are not. The findings also confirm a positive relationship between attitudes and perceived behavioural control. Finally, a positive significant relationship was found between perceived behavioural control and waste prevention behaviour, and between social norms and waste prevention behaviour. The results of our investigation are contextualised in theoretical, political and managerial frameworks and suggest several avenues for further research.

Extended producer responsibility: The impact of organizational dimensions on WEEE collection from households.

Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) has been the backbone of product life cycle management in Europe since the 2000s. Unfortunately, EPR implementation has multiple impacts on the supply chain and, thus, its consequences are not always easily manageable. Although several studies have explored various examples within the EU, the determinants of the effectiveness of EPR management are still not fully understood. This research seeks to bridge this gap by making use of quantitative analyses to investigate how key issues related to: WEEE Directive transposition and organizational settings adopted by each Member State, influenced the results achieved in those Member States in terms of collection from households. In details, a latent class analysis (LCA) has been used to analyse different EPR management strategies based on the policy set, the supply chain structure, and the performance of the household collection of electronic waste. Results highlight the strong connection between allocation of responsibility and organizational model adopted in Member States and performance related to small households equipment's. Conclusions shows the need for stronger coordination of EPR and waste policies in order to achieve adequate levels of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) collection, the need of a clear delineation of the responsibilities of each subject of the supply chain and also the importance of "clearing houses" in moderating the impacts of short-sighted competition between collective schemes.