Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359

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Resources, Conservation & Recycling

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/resconrec

A systematic literature review on Circular Economy implementation in the

construction industry: a policy-making perspective
Yifei Yu a, *, Veronica Junjan b, Devrim Murat Yazan a, Maria-Eugenia Iacob a
a
Department of Industrial Engineering and Business Information Systems, University of Twente, The Netherlands
b
Department of Public Administration, University of Twente, The Netherlands

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Implementing Circular Economy (CE) is a promising solution to tackle environmental challenges in the con­
Circular economy struction industry. On the way towards a circular built environment, governmental policy support is viewed as an
Construction industry important enabler. However, most existing policies are insufficient to address complex CE challenges and there
Public policy
are substantial knowledge gaps in understanding CE policy-making from a systemic perspective in the con­
Policy cycle
Systematic literature review
struction industry. This literature review investigates construction CE based on the five-stage policy cycle
developed in the domain of public policy. Our main finding is that there is a lack of integrated policy-making
frameworks to manage construction projects based on CE. The five-stage-policy model is not widely recog­
nized by scientific communities or industrial practitioners to understand CE policy-making as a dynamic,
interactive, and iterative cycle. Therefore, we propose an integrated CE policy-making cycle based on the explicit
alignment between the state-of-the-art and the classical policy model. Furthermore, the lack of policy integration
is considered as one of the critical research gaps and we propose a bi-directional policy-making mechanism to
conceptualize the integrated processes of policy implementation and evaluation. The proposed frameworks
address current knowledge gaps and serve as theoretical guidelines for public and private actors to understand
more complex CE policy-making in the reality. Finally, we encourage interdisciplinary research to enhance in­
tegrated CE policy-making in the construction industry by 1) exploring the synergistic effect of CE policy
packages on the construction life cycle, and 2) creating a streamlined, transparent, and collaborative policy-
making environment based on Information & Communication Technologies.

1. Introduction solutions are in great demand to address the environmental challenges

Being responsible for around half of the physical asset creation in the
society, the construction industry is the principal force for the urban
dynamics and changes in the built environment (Winch, 2010). It is
closely related to urban development and economic growth but the
traditional linear production model of this industry is too wasteful to
maintain (Adams et al., 2017). The main negative environmental im­
pacts caused by construction and demolition actives include land dete­
rioration, resource depletion, waste generation, and various forms of
pollution to nature (Brown et al., 1996). Annually, the natural resources
consumed by the construction industry are between 1.2 and 1.8 million
tons in Europe (WEF, 2015). In terms of its wasteful outputs at a global
level, the overall construction waste generation in 40 countries reached
more than 3.0 billion tons annually until 2012 and this trend has been
increasing constantly (Akhtar & Sarmah, 2018). Therefore, innovative
witnessed in this industry.
Circular Economy (CE) is regarded as a promising solution to
harmonize economic growth and environmental protection. Although
CE is a contested concept with various implications in different domains
(Korhonen et al., 2018), it is generally defined as a sustainable initiative
that entails gradually decoupling economic activity from the consump­
tion of finite resources and designing waste out of the system (EMF,
2015). Essentially, CE seeks a paradigmatic shift from linear to circular
practices and generates economic, environmental, and social value
through designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and ma­
terials in use, and regenerating natural systems (EMF, 2015). Regarding
the core principles incorporated within CE, various R frameworks have
been used by scholars and practitioners for decades ranging from 3R to
10R (Kirchherr et al., 2017) and a critical discussion of different Rs in a
10R framework is provided by Reike et al. (2018). Particularly, the 3R

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: y.yu-1@utwente.nl (Y. Yu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106359
Received 30 November 2021; Received in revised form 1 April 2022; Accepted 11 April 2022
Available online 21 April 2022
0921-3449/© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-
nc-nd/4.0/).
Y. Yu et al.
(Reduce-Reuse-Recycle) framework is recognized as the most funda­
mental and inclusive CE principle (Brennan et al., 2015; Ghisellini et al.,
2016). It is at the core of CE promotion law 2009 in China (National
People’s Congress, 2008) and also serves as the foundation of the Waste
Framework Directive in the European Union (EU) with an added
dimension of ‘Recover’ (European Commission, 2008a).
In practice, CE can also be operationalized through three product
design and business model strategies. Two fundamental strategies are
(1) slowing the loop through the design of long-life goods and product-
life extension, the utilization period of the product is extended, and (2)
closing the loop through recycling, the loop between post-use and pro­
duction is closed, while the third focuses on (3) narrowing the loop using
fewer resources per product (Bocken et al., 2016). The 3R framework
contributes to the realization of these strategies as a guideline at
different production levels (Kirchherr et al., 2017). Therefore, we
consider the core principles of CE as the combination of the activity
framework (Reduce-Reuse-Recycle) and the strategy framework (slow­
ing, closing, and narrowing the loop) in this research.
In parallel, CE can also be seen as a useful approach to achieving
local, national, and global sustainability (Rodriguez-Anton et al., 2019).
As stated in the EU action plan for CE: “This action plan will be instru­
mental in reaching the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, in
particular, Goal 12 of ensuring sustainable consumption and production
patterns.” (European European Commission, 2015). The relationships
between CE and SDGs exist inherently in their policy definitions. Several
studies investigated the extent to which CE practices are relevant for the
implementation of SDGs and identified which SDGs have significant
relationships with the concept of CE (Schroeder et al., 2019; Rodrigue­
z-Anton et al., 2019). Since CE is closely related to sustainable devel­
opment, it gains weight as a prominent part of the national policy
agenda aiming to substitute the make-use-disposal paradigm across
different industries (European Commission, 2011a).
Particularly, the construction industry attracts significant attention
from the government because of its high resource intensity and waste
pollution. However, the CE implementation in this industry is still hin­
dered by various barriers and challenges (Adams et al., 2017; Ghisellini
et al., 2018). Current literature recognizes that CE implementation in the
built environment is an interlinked challenge that relates to both public
and private stakeholders (Pomponi & Moncaster, 2017; Ruiz et al.,
2020). Not only should the industrial actors strive for a circular future by
revising their business models, behavioral patterns, and expectations
from products, but also the government needs to actively provide reg­
ulatory guidance to align the strategic agendas of public authorities and
industrial actors (Adams et al., 2017; Ghisellini et al., 2018; Schraven
et al., 2019; Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020). The regulatory guidance
here covers a broad range of policies, regulations, ordinances, and ini­
tiatives introduced by local or national governments.
Legal enforcement is recognized as a focal driver towards CE tran­
sition because policies shape the top-down momentum to accelerate and
scale up CE activities (Lieder & Rashid, 2016). However, there is limited
understanding of CE policy-making given the unique characteristics of
the construction industry. Whereas industrial actors wait for effective
and tangible policy support, policymakers still puzzle on how exactly CE
policies should be developed and implemented in this industry. The
construction industry has its own culture and characteristics (Winch,
2010). First, most buildings are complex and one-off products built upon
dynamic and interrelated material flows spanning huge differences in
space and time (Pomponi and Moncaster 2017). Second, the construc­
tion value chain is fragmented and highly affected by inefficient col­
laborations with various stakeholders who share neither a common
"language" (Adriaanse et al. 2010) nor a mutual vision (Vrijhoef 2011).
Since construction products are inherently different from other short-life
products produced in a more streamlined environment, it is challenging
to gravitate the construction industry towards CE via regular policy
instruments. In fact, the current regulatory guideline has fallen short of
providing clear rules for implementing CE goals and mismatches exist
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
among official policies, regulatory frameworks, and industrial business
practices on the way towards a circular built environment (Ghaffa et al.,
2020; Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020).
To tackle the CE policy-making challenge in this sector, we first need
to understand the basic policy-making processes holistically. Public
policies are government statements designed to achieve defined goals
and present solutions to societal problems (Newton & Deth, 2005). To
better conceptualize and evaluate diverse policy approaches, Harold
Lasswell (1956) first raised the idea of modeling the policy process in
terms of stages. During the 1960s and 1970s, the stage model served as a
baseline to organize and systemize a growing body of literature and
research with different variants of the stage typologies (Anderson, 1975;
May & Wildavsky, 1978; Jenkins, 1978; Brewer & deLeon, 1983).
Nowadays, the classic policy model has developed into the most widely
applied policy-making cycle with five major stages, namely, (1)
agenda-setting, (2) policy formulation, (3) policy decision-making, (4)
policy implementation, and (5) policy evaluation. Although it is a
simplified and ideal-type model of the policy-making processes, this
model emphasizes the interconnections and feedback loops between
different policy-making elements from a cyclical perspective (Fischer
et al., 2007). Therefore, the policy cycle provides a useful heuristic for
breaking the entire policy-making system into limited components to
structure the realistic policy-making processes (Knill & Tosun, 2008).
However, to the best of our knowledge, no study investigated con­
struction CE implementation from an integrated policy cycle perspec­
tive. Little is known about the underlying mechanism of how policies
reform construction and demolition practices towards CE through the
policy cycle. The existing literature reviews of policy-making for sus­
tainable construction mainly focused on conventional Construction &
Demolition Waste (CDW) management without considering the broader
landscape of CE (Lu & Tam, 2013; Zutshi & Creed, 2015; Umar et al.,
2017; Ghisellini et al., 2018). Others emphasized the general CE
policy-making at a national level (Sakai et al., 2011; Xia, 2016; Cui &
Zhang, 2018; Milios, 2018), but left the peculiarities of construction
products and markets in an interrelated set of policies unapprised. To
this end, a comprehensive literature review on how public policy sup­
ports construction CE transition is missing. Exploring this topic helps (1)
governmental actors to understand the vital processes of translating
high-level policies into tangible industrial actions in order to accelerate
and scale up CE implementation, and (2) industrial actors to recognize
the entire policy cycle so that they can better position themselves within
the interactions with the governmental actors. We argue that the
five-stage policy cycle can serve as a valuable framework to conceptu­
alize the CE policy-making processes in the built environment. There­
fore, we conduct a systematic literature review on construction CE
policy-making based on the five-stage policy cycle. Specifically, the
research objectives are threefold:
• To make explicit alignment between the five-stage policy cycle and
the state-of-the-art of CE policy-making in the construction sector;
• To propose an integrated CE policy-making framework as a guideline
for public and private actors on how to implement CE in this sector;
• To identify the current challenges and limitations of CE policy-
making for this sector and provide recommendations for future
research directions.
The rest of the article is structured as follows: the next section pre­
sents the review methodology. In Section 3, we classify the state-of-the-
art based on the policy cycle model and develop an integrated CE policy-
making cycle. In Section 4, we identify research gaps and emerging
topics, and propose future research directions. Finally, conclusions are
provided in Section 5.
2. Methodology
A systematic literature review provides a comprehensive overview of
Y. Yu et al.
Fig. 1. Methodology of systematic literature review
the existing scientific evidence concerning a specific research domain
(Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). It helps to identify, evaluate, and
interpret available studies regarding the topic of interest (Kitchenham &
Charters, 2007), and guides new research directions based on the
defined knowledge gaps (Tranfield, 2003). We conducted a systematic
literature review in April 2021 by retrieving and analyzing the relevant
academic papers from the Web of Science (WoS). WoS is regarded as one
of the high-quality bibliometric data sources for academic research
(Archambault et al., 2009). It was the only systematic publication source
of evidence-driven decision support for funders and governments until
2004 when Scopus was introduced (Guerrero-Bote et al., 2021). There
are no clear criteria for ranking these two databases but the fundamental
difference in these two indexing bodies is: WoS (based on Eugene Gar­
field’s concepts) covers a selective set of most frequently used or cited
journals, while Scopus (with broad coverage) is more similar to large
disciplinary literature databases (López-Illescas et al., 2008). To provide
a replicable review process with the legitimacy and authority of the
resultant evidence, the reviewing procedures proposed by Kitchenham
& Brereton (2013) were applied.
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
For an extensive analysis of literature, the search scope should be
properly defined. However, it is challenging to define the scope of this
study because (1) CE is a new rising topic in the construction industry,
and (2) CE covers extensive but scattered implications in diverse disci­
plinary fields. To overcome this challenge, the standard manual
searching protocol was supported by additional citation analysis. This is
a process to improve the comprehensiveness of the review by capturing
any missing documentation based on the references of the selected pa­
pers, which is also known as the backward snowballing technique
(Kitchenham & Charters, 2007). In summary, the overall workflow is
graphically demonstrated in Fig. 1.
First, keyword combinations were developed based on the existing
literature. CE is an essentially contested concept and numerous defini­
tions were given by scholars from different fields (Geissdoerfer et al.,
2017; Korhonen et al., 2018). The core of CE is generally perceived as a
sustainable vision of realizing a circular or closed-loop structure of
materials and energy consumption in the whole economic system, based
on but not limited to the conventional waste management practices
(Yuan et al., 2006; Geng & Doberstein, 2008). Therefore, the keywords
Y. Yu et al.
Table 1
Heatmap of literature analysis: Main literature content aligned with the five-stage policy cycle
encompassing the CE implementation were proposed as "Circular
economy", "Cradle to cradle", "Closed-loop", "Industrial ecology",
"Regenerative design", "Green supply chain" and "Cleaner production"
(EMF, 2015; Kirchherr et al., 2017). Besides, the CE implementation for
the construction industry has a deep bond with CDW management
(Adams et al., 2017; Ghisellini et al., 2018). Therefore, "Construction &
demolition waste management" was added to the searching string to
ensure a significant result. As for the policy, the following keywords
were used, namely "Polic*", "Government", "Regulation*", "Legal*",
"Subsid*" and "Tax*". Finally, "Construction", "Demolition" and "Built
environment" were applied to remain the focus within the construction
industry.
We collected peer-reviewed journal papers and conference pro­
ceedings published during 2010 – 2021. The year 2010 was selected as a
starting point because (1) a growing interest of the scientific community
in the CE implementation was witnessed in the construction industry
over the past decade (Munaro et al., 2020; Hossain, et al., 2020), and (2)
the concept of CE was consistently adopted by policymakers as a
prominent part of national development strategy in the past decade
through the Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) (European
Commission, 2008a), the “flagship” initiative for a resource-efficient
Europe in 2011 (European Commission, 2011b), and the CE promo­
tion Law launched in the Chinese national-level framework in 2009
(National People’s Congress, 2008). In the preliminary search, 521 out
of 659 papers were filtered based on the inquiry strings with inclusion
criteria of peer-reviewed articles and conference papers written in En­
glish between 2010 to 2021. Then, the first-round selection process was
conducted to examine the literature relevance by screen-scanning titles
and keywords, which resulted in 246 candidate papers.
The following inclusion criteria to further filter the articles were
applied: 1) the documents contain the information about governmental
policies proposed for CE implementation in the construction industry, 2)
the studies that are associated with one or more policy-making processes
covering agenda-setting, formulation, decision-making,
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
implementation, and evaluation, and 3) the full-text of the document is
available. The focus was placed on the studies that provide relevant
information of policy-making processes and consider explicitly the core
principles of CE. Otherwise, we considered that we could not retrieve
sufficient evidence from the literature regarding how a particular policy
can be formulated and carried out, and in which way it is associated with
the concept of CE. Therefore, the following exclusion criteria were
applied: 1) the studies only mention the importance of CE policy support
as a suggestion without elaborating its role in the agenda-setting nor the
potential of formulation, decision-making, and/or implementation, or 2)
the studies only investigate down-cycle practices of sustainable CDW
management with limited environmental or economic implications. This
led to a shortlist of 40 papers. To further improve the completeness of
the selected literature, a first-degree backward citation analysis was
conducted. Another 9 articles meeting the inclusion criteria were added
to the shortlist, which brought the final result of 49 papers (Appendix:
Table 2. List of collected papers).
The selected papers were analyzed according to the Qualitative Text
Analysis method proposed by Kuckartz (2014). We applied the following
steps to conduct thematic text analysis: 1) highlight critical information
of CE policy-making in the paper based on the keywords of
policy-making processes, 2) develop main topical categories based on
the five-stage policy cycle, 3) summarize the relevant statements and
findings according to the categories, 4) analyze information and
improve the categories iteratively, and 5) present the results. In partic­
ular, we identified the potential connections between the-state-of-the art
and the five-stage policy cycle by mapping the main content of literature
with each stage of the policy cycle. The intermediate mapping results
can be found in supplementary materials. Based on the literature anal­
ysis, we conceptualized an integrated CE policy-making cycle in the
construction industry and proposed future research directions.
Y. Yu et al.
Fig. 2. Global overview of CE initiatives in the construction sector
3. Results
In this section, we first analyze the state-of-the-art of CE policy-
making in the construction industry by understanding in which way it
is aligned with the five-stage policy cycle. Then, we develop an inte­
grated CE policy-making framework to outline the state-of-the-art based
on the literature analysis.
3.1. State-of-the-art
The literature analysis starts by mapping the main literature content
with the different stages of the policy cycle in Table 1. The numbers
allocated to each cell indicate the number of studies that fall under a
certain category. Some studies match more than one category, therefore,
every matched cell is counted. The definition of each policy-making
process provided by Howlett & Ramesh (1995) is listed below:
• Agenda-setting: the initial stage where a problem/challenge that
impacts the public is identified;
• Policy formulation: the stage that involves the development of policy
options by narrowing the range of possible policy alternatives;
• Policy decision-making: the stage where government leaders decide
on a particular course of action that ideally will best address the
problem for the most members of the public;
• Policy implementation: the stage where governments put the chosen
public policy option into effect;
• Policy evaluation: the stage where interested parties both within and
without the government monitor the impact of the policy and
determine if it is achieving the intended objectives.
Aligning the collected literature with the policy cycle based on the
original definition of five stages is hindered given that (1) most studies
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
are conducted without considering this cycle, (2) the review scope is
confined within the scientific publications instead of focusing on the
policy documents in different regions, and (3) the policy implementa­
tion generally requires a long-term perspective to become apparent. The
literature provides limited “internal” information regarding how the
governments make decisions, while scientific outputs come mostly in the
form of “external” theoretical justifications supporting policy decision-
making. In this regard, we tailor the definition of each policy stage in
order to position the state-of-the-art in the five-stage policy cycle as
follows:
• The vital role of CE in policy agenda-setting: the studies showing how
environmental challenges of the built environment comes to the
attention of governments and how CE policy proposals are
developed;
• Alternatives in policy formulation: the studies researching various
types of policy alternatives or recommendations that can be valuable
to support CE transition in the built environment;
• Methodologies for policy decision-making: the studies developing
predictive analysis methods in order to support policymakers when
selecting and filtering a particular set of policies based on historical
experience, and on the predictive assessment of their effects;
• Evidence collected from policy implementation: the studies showing
how CE policies are carried out by the governments in different
forms, and providing implementation evidence that is collected
through policy execution plans indicating what policies take effect;
• Knowledge basis for policy evaluation: the studies developing sci­
entific quantification methods as the knowledge basis for the moni­
toring and assessment of policy performance.
First, we observe that the vital role of policy support is well-
recognized in CE transition at the stage of agenda-setting. Then,
Y. Yu et al.
multiple policy alternatives are provided to support CE implementation
from different perspectives at the policy formulation stage. Starting from
the third stage of policy decision-making, the literature category de­
viates from the original policy cycle to different extents. Instead of
describing the actual decision-making process of how a policy alterna­
tive would be determined by policymakers as the final solution, the
literature provides predictive analysis methods to facilitate such a pro­
cess. In terms of policy implementation, policies that can potentially
contribute to CE transition were conducted in various forms by public
organizations at different levels. Although the collected studies do not
show the entire policy cycle of CE policies due to the relative short-term
implementation period, they indeed provide evidence indicating that
most existing policies are insufficient to address complex CE challenges.
Lastly, scholars propose novel approaches that can support policy
evaluation by quantifying the environmental and economic impacts
brought by CE activities in different scenarios. These studies can be
regarded as the knowledge basis for policy evaluation though the cor­
responding interpretations are often derived from quantitative modeling
results.
The proposed literature classification serves as a coherent baseline to
understand the state-of-the-art of CE policy-making in the construction
industry from a theoretical lens. Table 1. shows a diagonal mapping
pattern between literature contents and policy cycle stages. On the one
hand, the collected studies analyze CE policy-making in the construction
sector from different perspectives. On the other hand, the pattern also
indicates that there is a lack of comprehensive understanding of the CE
policy-making cycle. Most studies only investigate CE policy-making
from one particular perspective without considering the potential con­
nections between different policy stages in a broader operational context
of the entire policy cycle. In the following paragraphs, the main topics
investigated by the collected studies are summarized.
3.1.1. The vital role of CE in policy agenda-setting
According to the literature, the CE challenges in the construction
industry attracted the government’s attention from the stage of policy
agenda-setting. A comparative study was conducted to analyze the
policies for CDW management in China and the EU, and underscored the
important role of punitive measures and preferential policies in sus­
tainable CDW management (Hao et al., 2020). Mahpour (2018) priori­
tized the barriers to adapting CE in CDW management and pointed out
that current policies and legal frameworks were inadequate to manage
CDW in a circular way. Defined by Karhu & Linkola et al. (2019), effi­
cient policy instruments and legislation support are imperative targets
that must be adopted to realize CE. Meanwhile, the lack of effective
regulatory frameworks to support CE transition is actually defined as a
critical challenge associated with CE policy-making. Bilal et al. (2020)
identified that a lack of environmental regulations and laws was driving
the rest of the barriers to a CE in this industry. To understand the role of
local governments in the CE transition, Bolger & Doyon (2019) con­
ducted a comparative case study and explored the opportunities and
barriers to applying CE principles through governmental strategic
planning. Another study revealed that the lack of institutional collabo­
ration and immature strategic policies for effective CDW recovery are
the two major issues that hindered CE based on an assessment of CDW
generation, regulation, and management policies (Blaisi, 2019).
To present a global overview of CE initiatives, policies, and regula­
tions proposed in the construction industry, we developed Fig. 2 based
on the collected information regarding CE policy agenda-setting. In this
figure, the color of each location circle is loosely associated with the
level of development of CE policies. In general, the deeper the color, the
more traceable history of CE policies is observed. This result is limited to
the information presented in the collected papers and may not capture
all the policy details of each region. However, it shows that CE is
globally gaining momentum as a prominent part of national develop­
ment strategies. Particularly, the EU area has a higher density of CE
policy initiatives compared to other areas. This could be the result of the
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
fact that most EU member states adopted CE guidelines proposed by the
European Commission and tailored CE strategies according to their own
situations while other countries need to innovate CE with little cross-
border collaboration. Although construction CE is implemented to
different extents in different regions due to diverse social, political, and
technical factors, each CE initiative generally contains the specific tar­
gets and timelines for achieving CE milestones spanning five to ten
years.
However, it is rather unclear to what extent each country has
implemented CE by only referring to the governmental agenda reports
mentioned in the articles. The CDW recovery rates of EU member states
increased in the past decade and 19 out of 30 counties (where data is
available) have reached more than 90% (Eurostat, 2022). It is not
completely clear to what extent the CE was implemented as this indi­
cator is defined as follows: “the ratio of CDW which is prepared for re-use,
recycled or subject to material recovery, including through backfilling oper­
ations, divided by the construction and demolition waste treated as defined in
Regulation (EC) No. 2150/2002 on waste statistics” (Eurostat, 2022).
Backfilling operations do not efficiently help to maintain material value
to the greatest extent, thus, they can only be regarded as a down-cycling
indicator that does not stimulate high-quality CE implementation (Di
Maria et al., 2018).
It remains a puzzle whether more CE proposals observed in policy
agenda-setting actually lead to a higher level of CE implementation.
What can at least be concluded here is that there could be a mismatch
between policy agenda-setting and policy implementation. More infor­
mation about policy implementation is provided in Section 3.1.4. Evi­
dence collected from policy implementation. Still, this figure shows an
increasing global awareness of CE implementation, and continuous
pressure of implementing CE is allocated to the built environment by
government bodies. Besides, non-EU countries have diverse national
strategies for CE but the regulatory frameworks in the construction
sector are mainly associated with CDW management at the End of Life
(EoL) phase.
In summary, although the vital role of policy support in CE transition
is recognized globally, there is a lack of effective policy frameworks to
manage and supervise construction projects according to CE principles.
The conventional CDW management policy has profound impacts on the
modern CE policy in terms of establishing a regulatory foundation to
deal with CDW by applying reusing and recycling principles (See sup­
plementary materials for the analysis of keywords co-occurrence).
Evolving from the previous CDW management policies, the recent CE
policy initiatives shift the emphasis towards waste prevention strategies
and cross-disciplinary collaborations, which indicates that policymakers
and industrial actors aim to provide more efficient and advanced mea­
sures to achieve CE.
3.1.2. Alternatives in policy formulation
The literature provides various alternatives to support policy
formulation. Gálvez-Martos et al. (2018) synthesized core CE principles
and linked best practices for CDW management across the construction
value chain to support policy-making. The practical cases of CDW pol­
icies and management in China were analyzed based on 3R principles of
CE and various policy strategies were provided (Huang et al., 2018).
(Campbell-Johnston et al. (2019) showed that public procurement,
zoning laws, capacity building, and knowledge exchange can be applied
to the construction sector to support CE. Similarly, Ghaffar et al. (2020)
indicated that the legislation proposed by the government regulating the
reuse and recycling thresholds for new project procurement can sub­
stantially improve construction circularity. Heurkens & Dabrowski
(2020) identified and classified barriers to CE transition and provided
recommendations to tackle the multi-disciplinary CE challenges,
including enhancing regional spatial-economic coordination policies
among different governmental levels and key actors.
Apart from general CE policy strategies, the economic policy in­
terventions were discussed in detail as an effective CE measurement.
Y. Yu et al.
Nussholz et al. (2019) suggested that public policies can help companies
to remove CE barriers by incorporating higher recovery goals and
incentivizing the recovery market. Rodriguez et al. (2015) pointed out
that the role of government support is mainly confined to regulating
CDW recycling by establishing legislative frameworks with insufficient
economic penalties or incentives involved. Moreover, the policies that
provide long-term and reliable financial support should be promoted in
compliance with CE principles to incentivize stakeholders who are
innovating for CE (Gorecki et al., 2019; Ghaffar et al., 2020).
The reusing and recycling processes require careful management to
ensure the quality of recovered CDW. Quaranta et al. (2010) presented a
step-wise schema was presented for the safe recycling management of
CDW containing hazardous or toxic substances as the first step to pro­
posing proper EoL norms. Next, Rodriguez-Robles et al. (2014) pre­
sented reuse options and recommendations for concrete manufacturing
for recycled aggregates by conducting physic-mechanical tests to vali­
date the reusability of concrete waste according to Spanish standards.
Behera et al. (2014) analyzed important features of recycled concrete
aggregates as an alternative input for concrete production and summa­
rized several suggestions to improve mechanical and durability perfor­
mance, which can potentially contribute to the formulation of quality
standards. Duan et al. (2016) urged the development of the proper CDW
management policies with a priority of proposing a classification system
to filter out harmful materials for more extensive processing.
In summary, five types of CE policy interventions were identified in
the literature: (1) subsidizing policies for sustainable CDW management
practices, such as innovating waste recycling technologies and pur­
chasing recycling equipment, (2) taxing policies for unsustainable CDW
management practices, such as charging waste dumping and raising
taxes for virgin resource consumption, (3) operational guidance and
regulations for sustainable CDW management, for instance, regulatory
frameworks for on-site waste sorting and EoL waste management, (4)
technical assessment schemas and standards for secondary materials, for
example, the concentration standards for recycled concrete aggregates
containing hazardous substances, to realize a non-toxic and circular
material value chain, and (5) waste prevention and minimization sug­
gestions were provided to cut down waste generation, such as circular
design strategies and green procurement criteria.
3.1.3. Methodologies for policy decision-making
In the stage of policy decision-making, the decision is made to select
the policy which is subsequently implemented in practice. The literature
provides predictive analysis methods that can potentially facilitate
policymakers with policy decision-making. Many studies conducted
quantitative simulation analysis to estimate the potential policy effects.
Yan (2015) developed a system dynamic simulation model to evaluate
the dynamics of project-based competition for sustainable construction
market development under different project awarding systems. Yuan
et al. (2012) applied a similar method to simulate the effects of man­
agement strategies on CDW reduction while Calvo et al. (2014) used it to
evaluate the impacts of economic incentives and tax penalties on the
behavior changing of firms in the CDW recycling system. Besides, an
optimization model was developed to assess the economic, technical,
and environmental performance of a CDW supply chain under potential
policy interventions (Hiete et al., 2011). Moreover, a stochastic simu­
lation model was developed to optimize economic benefits to provide
more incentive for material recycling with uncertain waste qualities
under different environmental regulations (Trochu, et al., 2020).
The dynamic evolutionary game model was applied to investigate
the effect of the government’s reward-penalty mechanism on the
decision-making process of production and recycling actors in the CDW
supply chain (Long, et al., 2020). A similar approach was applied to
analyze the symbiotic evolution between construction and recycling
actors in the situation with or without government incentives (Ma &
Zhang, 2020). Su et al. (2020) developed an evolutionary game model to
analyze the change of high-level strategies for governments, contractors,
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
and recyclers in the sustainable CDW market. Besides, a mixed-integer
nonlinear programming model was developed to optimize the eco­
nomic performance of a CDW closed-loop supply chain under carbon
policy scenarios (Shi et al., 2020). Some studies also considered the
dynamic interactions among actors. A model integrated regional mate­
rial flow modeling with stakeholders, policy measures, their impacts,
and mutual interactions, to provide a predictive assessment of potential
policy effects (Volk et al., 2019). In addition, an iterative algorithmic
method with fuzzy random variables was proposed to balance the re­
quirements of public and private stakeholders in the construction in­
dustry (Zhang et al., 2017). Furthermore, agent-based simulation was
applied to explore how the change of attitudes and the dynamic inter­
action among actors can influence CDW management with the govern­
ment agent playing a leading role by conducting policies, laws, and
regulations (Ding et al., 2016). Finally, a qualitative framework was
developed to facilitate local government with the selection of appro­
priate CDW policy instruments (Li et al., 2020a).
In summary, simulation models were developed to understand the
potential effects of economic policy interventions through scenario
analysis considering stakeholder behaviors or dynamic market situa­
tions. Under different policy scenarios, most models revealed policy
effects on the dynamic interactions of heterogenous stakeholders, and
others predictively quantified future material flows. These studies pro­
vided predictive indications for alternative policy options and can
potentially support policy decision-making. However, existing models
are not comparable due to different system boundaries, assumptions,
and data sources, and often focus on one particular material with limited
stakeholders (Calvo et al., 2014; Su et al., 2020). More practical data is
needed to validate how the simulated policies would take effect and
diffuse through different organizational levels in the long term (Yan
et al., 2015; Volk et al., 2019).
3.1.4. Evidence collected from policy implementation
In this section, we summarize the evidence collected from policy
implementation to understand what policy instruments take effect and
what challenges are identified through the implementation process.
First, Bao & Lu (2020) pointed out that strong governmental in­
terventions combing penalties and subsidies is an important factor
contributing to successful CE implementation in China. Ma et al. (2020)
identified several challenges for sustainable CDW management after
investigating recycling plants in China, namely, unstable sources of
CDW for recycling & reusing, absence of subsidies for sustainable
business activities, and insufficient attention paid to design for waste
minimization. Besides, Yeheyis et al. (2013) provided an overview of
legislative regulations and codes implemented for sustainable CDW
management in Canada and revealed the lack of enforcement mecha­
nisms related to 3R regulations. Another study by Arm et al. (2017)
investigated waste recovery targets implemented in Nordic countries
and indicated factors such as the unclear definition of waste and lack of
data standardization as the reasons why recovery target was not pro­
posed properly in the EU Waste Framework Directive.
The Construction Waste Disposal Charging Scheme (CWDCS)
implemented by the Hong Kong government in 2005 was one of the
policies that attracted long-term investigations. Several studies exam­
ined the effectiveness of this scheme together with other CDW policies
on the way towards a circular built environment. Lu & Tam (2013)
proposed two lessons derived from Hong Kong’s experience in imple­
menting CDW policies, namely, forming interlocking policy systems and
launching educational campaigns for sustainable development to in­
crease the awareness of citizens about sustainable policies. Besides, local
feedback indicated improving environmental performance as the least
important project requirement for construction projects in Hong Kong,
and the lack of effective waste management methods incorporating 3R
principles as the major barrier encountered by actors (Tam et al., 2012).
Poon et al. (2013) explored the perceptions of construction practitioners
towards CWDCS after three years of implementation and found that the
Y. Yu et al.
Fig. 3. A theoretical framework of CE policy-making cycle in the construction industry
policy only led to less than 5% CDW reduction, and the costs of CWDCS
were not high enough to raise industrial awareness about sustainable
CDW management.
Apart from the academic literature, we also noticed the CE mo­
mentum generated by the recent development of EU policies in the form
of Green Public Procurement (GPP). Specifically, GPP is defined as “A
process whereby public authorities seek to procure goods, services, and works
with a reduced environmental impact throughout their life cycle when
compared to those with the same primary function that would otherwise be
procured ” (European Commission, 2008b). Alhola et al. (2019) identi­
fied four areas where circular procurement can potentially occur in the
construction sector through case studies, namely, the procurement of
better-quality products in circular terms, the procurement of new cir­
cular products, the use of business concepts that support the CE, and
investments in circular ecosystems. Also, the European Commission
promoted GPP through the use of life cycle assessment, circular econ­
omy principles, and sustainable innovation approaches in Europe since
2010. By setting “greener” criteria and requirements for the extension of
product life spans and efficiency of material consumption, successful
case studies were observed with valuable lessons learned (European
Commission, 2021). For instance, practices with a circular building in
Brussels showed that the evaluation approach of circularity and sus­
tainability must be integrated into the holistic design of a project and not
regarded as a stand-alone criterion (Government of Flanders, 2021).
In summary, experiences of CE policy implementation were rather
limited because it generally takes time and continuing policy enforce­
ment to reveal the long-term effect of CE policies. On the one hand, most
studies identified challenges and enablers of CE policy implementation
and found that existing policies mostly cover waste-centric regulations
dealing with the generated waste. They could be insufficient to address
complex CE challenges because ‘prevention’ is prioritized as the most
favored option in the waste hierarchy pyramid based on CE principles
(European Commission, 2008a). On the other hand, valuable lessons
were learned from GPP practices through European case studies because
modern circular policies are mostly at their incipient stages except for
circular procurement practices which immediately take effect when the
new project is initiated. Notably, the experience and evidence were
limited to specific construction projects because every project was
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
unique regarding its life-cycle complex and material composition.
3.1.5. Knowledge basis for policy evaluation
To realize CE in the construction industry, evaluating policy mea­
sures can be challenging because (1) there is a lack of standardization
and tools to evaluate policy performance on construction projects (Filho
et al., 2020), and (2) policy-making often involves multicriteria
trade-offs on environmental, economic, and social aspects (Fischer et al.,
2007). Therefore, solid scientific evidence should be provided to ensure
comprehensive and informative policy evaluation. Economic viability
analysis of the CDW recycling plant was conducted and showed that
CDW recycling practices can be profitable even without government
policy intervention and the methodology can potentially support the
evaluation of economic policy instruments (Coelho & De Brito, 2013).
To promote CE, Di Maria et al. (2018) combined Life Cycle Assessment
(LCA) with Life Cycle Costing (LCC) to evaluate alternative CDW
End-of-Life scenarios in Belgium and highlighted environmental and
economic enablers in CDW management. Similarly, Liu et al. (2020)
analyzed the environmental and economic drivers of recycling CDW
under three waste disposal scenarios in China and evaluated low-carbon
policies. Ram et al. (2020) quantified the environmental impacts of
recycling CDW debris to support sustainable CDW management. Ver­
hagen et al. (2021) provided an empirical method to quantify CDW that
can be re-promoted as secondary materials, which supported the
decision-making of new CDW policies. Other studies developed various
quantification methods to estimate CDW flows and stocks under
different policy scenarios to provide an informative representation of
recoverable material flows, which can be taken as a predictive knowl­
edge basis for policy evaluation (Ortlepp et al., 2016; Stephan & Atha­
nassiadis, 2018; Arora et al., 2020).
Based on the assessment from various aspects, environmental in­
dicators were proposed as a managerial tool for the public sector to link
the statistical results with policy evaluation. A literature review of
environmental impact indicators for adaptive reuse of cultural heritage
buildings from a CE perspective was conducted and it encouraged the
improvement of the CE indicator system (Foster & Kreinin, 2020).
Paschoalin Filho et al. (2020) proposed a list of environmental in­
dicators for CDW management practices assessment to verify the
Y. Yu et al.
adhesion of practical routines to environmental laws, technical stan­
dards, and green building certification systems recommendations.
Furthermore, exploratory data analytics and data envelopment analysis
were proposed to evaluate the performance of CDW management pol­
icies, which addressed the limitations of the poor quality of metrics,
data, and parametric indicators (Taboada et al., 2020).
To summarize, LCA and LCC results showed that the combination of
environmental and economic analysis can improve the understanding of
the CE problem to be analyzed, which can potentially support policy
evaluation though time factors may introduce uncertainties to the re­
sults (Di Maria et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2020). It is also consistent with the
analysis of keywords co-occurrence (See supplementary materials). This
finding echoes the suggestions raised by Ghisellini et al. (2018b) that
stronger integration of economic and environmental evaluation in­
struments should be realized to support sustainable policy-making, in
order to overcome regulatory, know-how, and business barriers to a CE.
Also, the quantitative estimation of CDW flows can be regarded as a
knowledge basis for policy evaluation though more reliable databases of
material flows are required (Ortlepp et al., 2016; Stephan & Atha­
nassiadis, 2018). The CE indicators proposed from different perspectives
enhanced the evaluation of policy effects and created room for contin­
uous adjustment and improvement of policy objectives and in­
terventions. However, the literature provides limited information on
how exactly the evaluation would lead to the re-conceptualization of the
existing policies based on the combination of quantitative modeling
results and qualitative evidence observed from actual policy
implementation.
3.2. Integrated CE policy-making cycle
According to the literature discussed above, we develop a stage-wise
overview of construction CE policy-making in Fig. 3. It summarizes the
state-of-the-art in a stage-wise manner, shows the potential in­
terconnections among different policy-making processes, and reveals
the iterative nature of policy-making. As mentioned in the previous
section, most information and evidence related to CE policy imple­
mentation in the built environment are limited to agenda-setting and
policy formulation. Although there is adequate policy implementation
evidence regarding CDW management, those policies are mostly
restricted to reusing and recycling practices by economic stimulus and
failed to achieve a systematic CE transition considering the complex CE
landscape. Currently, the three major functions of CE policies formu­
lated in the construction industry are identified based on the literature:
(1) providing long-term reliable financial support to motivate circular
behaviors and nourish circular business collaborations, (2) applying
economic instruments to coordinate the secondary material market by
regulating the supply and demand dynamics of secondary materials, and
(3) proposing assessment standards to ensure qualities of recovered
materials. The CE policies aiming at waste reduction/minimization
remain at the formulation stage where various theoretical options are
proposed with little evidence outside the lessons learned from GPP. In
short, CE policy-making for the construction sector is currently at an
incipient stage.
Fig. 3 also shows that Information and Communication Technologies
(ICT) play a vital role in policy decision-making and evaluation. At these
two stages, various ICT solutions are applied to facilitate complex
policy-making tasks. For instance, the scenario analysis based on
simulation techniques creates opportunities to test hypothetical solu­
tions under future scenarios. By building, testing, and evaluating such a
simulation model, predictive knowledge can be obtained regarding
actual implementation to a certain extent (Yuan et al., 2012; Calvo et al.,
2014). Besides, LCA and other mathematical quantification methods
present a comprehensive evaluation of the policy effect on the material
and monetary flows (Di Maria et al., 2018; Liu et al., 2020). The
mainstream research on applying ICT to support policy-making found in
the literature is policy scenario simulation. With the development of
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
simulation techniques, policymakers can carry out complex scenario
analyses of potential policy options based on improved computational
capacity and flexibility. Through the robust quantitative policy analysis,
critical factors that influence policy implementation can be identified
and underlying connections of different factors are revealed, which
substantially support policy evaluation. The predictive policy assess­
ment is particularly important because of the dynamic and extensive life
spans of construction projects.
From a technological perspective, the continued development and
adoption of ICT are vital to capturing local feedback and integrating
policy-making processes. As pointed out by Pardo et al. (2011), new ICT
solutions can make the public sector more accessible, not only through
the provision of information or public services online but also as a result
of developed communication systems and advanced interoperability
among different organizations. However, the ICT applications (mainly
simulation models) reviewed in the literature rarely guide the integra­
tion and optimization of entire policy-making processes with
multi-stakeholder communication functions. On the one hand, most
models have limited system boundaries (Calvo et al., 2014; Su et al.,
2020) and the practical data is limited on how the simulated policies
would take effect and diffuse in the long term (Yan et al., 2015; Volk
et al., 2019). On the other hand, the literature provides insufficient in­
formation about how to organize and structure the combination of
quantitative modeling results with qualitative stakeholder feedback as
the input that may lead to the re-conceptualization of the existing policy.
Therefore, we argue that the integrated CE policy-making cycle is not yet
realized in the construction industry. More interdisciplinary research is
required to streamline the top-down policy translation and bottom-up
policy evaluation based on more diverse ICT solutions.
One principal disadvantage of Fig. 3 is that it may oversimplify the
policy-making processes. It should not be misinterpreted as suggesting
that all the policy-making processes are executed in a systematic linear
fashion because this is not the case in the reality where more com­
plexities are underlined. This also reflects another critical challenge of
current CE policy-making: linearization assumptions and simplifications
were often applied to guide the complex decision-making and ensure the
model tractability, which overlooked the iterative and complex nature
of the policy-making. Therefore, studies failed to tailor policy measures
for regions with different economic, technological, and social condi­
tions. Limited research evidence was collected from the literature
regarding how proposed policies would take effect and diffuse on a
realistic scale with dynamic and real-time performance feedback. In
other words, the interconnections between top-down policy imple­
mentation and bottom-up policy evaluation are not always explicitly
shown in the literature.
4. Discussion
In this section, we discuss and evaluate the results of the systematic
literature review from three perspectives. First, we identify research
gaps and emerging topics. Second, we propose a conceptual framework
of a bi-directional policy-making mechanism to exemplify the way how
a policy cycle would function through different organizational levels.
Third, recommendations for future research are provided.
4.1. Research gaps & emerging topics
There is a significant research gap in understanding how policies can
support CE transition in the built environment. Most studies investigate
policy strategies based on traditional construction supply chain struc­
tures without fully integrating CE principles. Therefore, they are insuf­
ficient to present a comprehensive overview of how CE concepts are
implemented through policy-making. The global landscape of imple­
menting CE for the construction industry is currently waste-centric,
based on conventional CDW recycling policies. Some policies failed to
improve construction resource efficiency to the desired extent, let alone
Y. Yu et al.
to create added value and reach a wider socio-economic goal of CE (Arm
et al., 2017; Bolger & Doyon, 2019; Hao et al., 2020).
We observed a lack of policy-making knowledge concerning the
complex nature of CE from the perspective of the entire construction
value chain. To this end, a research topic is emerging in terms of
achieving a higher level of policy integration to enable more efficient
resource recovery in the construction sector (Milios, 2018; Nussholz
et al., 2019). Generally, policy integration refers to the management of
cross-cutting issues in policy-making that goes beyond the boundaries of
existing policy fields, which do not correspond to the institutional re­
sponsibilities of individual departments (Meijers & Stead, 2004). The
basic requirements for integrated policy-making are comprehensiveness
(recognizing a broader scope of policy consequences in terms of time,
space, actors, and issues), aggregation (a minimal extent to which policy
alternatives are evaluated from an overall perspective), and consistency
(a minimal extent to which policy penetrates all policy stages at different
organizational levels) (Underdal, 1980). To better settle the concept of
policy integration in this review context, we refine and discuss it from
two specific perspectives as follows: (1) the process-wise policy inte­
gration answering the question of how different stages of policy-making
can be integrated to perform the policy cycle efficiently, and (2) the
content-wise policy integration answering the question of how different
types of policy instruments can be integrated to create synergistic CE
policy effects.
Although the issues related to policy coordination, policy integra­
tion, and policy harmonization are of increasing importance in the field
of CE policy-making (Dalhammar et al., 2021), they receive scant
attention in the built environment. On the one hand, most studies
analyze general enablers and barriers to CE implementation and identify
the vital role of policy support in CE transition with various policy al­
ternatives. However, the literature provides limited indications about
how these proposed policy alternatives can be implemented through the
policy cycle. The lack of process-wise policy integration relates to sig­
nificant disconnections between policy formulation and policy imple­
mentation. On the other hand, various decision support methodologies
are proposed in the form of simulation models to support policy
decision-making. However, these models are relatively limited to
analyzing economic interventions for CDW management individually
without revealing the synergistic effect with other types of policies
(Calvo et al., 2014; Volk et al., 2019; Shi et al., 2020). Therefore, there is
also a lack of content-wise policy integration that incorporates different
circular principles into an interlocking policy system addressing CE
challenges along the entire construction life-cycle.
Developing an integrated policy system is challenging because there
are various involved organizations and unconnected CE initiatives at
different levels (Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020). Cross-disciplinary co­
ordination is required to ensure policy coherence across different levels
of government (Bolger & Doyon, 2019). To address the issue of lack of
policy integration, both content-wise, and process-wise integration need
to be realized by coordinating complementary policy instruments to
support CE transition considering their consistency, coherency, and
synergistic effects at different organizational levels (Lu & Tam, 2013;
Milios, 2018). In parallel, we also need to carefully consider the in­
teractions and trade-offs of policies during the policy integration to limit
potential conflicts (Dalhammar et al., 2021).
Furthermore, little research delves into the dynamic policy-making
mechanism by systematically connecting policy implementation with
evaluation as an iterative and holistic cycle. Implementing policies is
only viewed as an external driver towards CE from a top-down
perspective without absorbing local policy feedback as a whole. CE
policy-making as a dynamic adaptive process is not recognized in the
construction industry. Policy evaluation is vital to an effective policy-
making cycle as it brings local knowledge and experiences of enacted
policies and helps to reconceptualize the new round of agenda-setting
(Lasswell, 1951). Some studies critically pointed out the shortcomings
of proposed visions and implemented policies. For instance, Arm et al.
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Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
(2017) questioned the ambiguous definitions of waste and waste re­
covery proposed in the CE target and provided more appropriate sug­
gestions showing the necessity of capturing the feedback of local actors
in policy-making processes.
Finally, a clear research trend is witnessed in innovating predictive
methods to quantify CDW flows as well as associated environmental
impacts in terms of both solid waste pollution and air emissions. The
construction industry is known to be responsible not only for significant
resource consumption but also for greenhouse gas emissions, which
emphasizes the need for comprehensive policy efforts to reduce the
overall resource burden together with pollutant emissions (UNEP,
2018). The topics of developing predictive assessment methods to
quantify the environmental, economic, and social impacts brought by
CE policies are emerging.
4.2. Bi-directional CE policy-making mechanism
To illustrate the iterative nature of the policy cycle and provide a
guideline for policy process integration, it would be helpful to picture
the dynamic interactions between policy processes at different organi­
zational levels. In this section, we propose a conceptual framework of a
bi-directional policy-making mechanism to exemplify the way how a
policy cycle would function through different organizational levels.
First, we argue that CE policy-making is a set of interactive and
iterative processes that will only be accomplished with the active
participation of both public and private actors. Here, the entire process
consists of two major parts, namely, policy translation and policy eval­
uation. Policy translation refers to the process through which the policy
meaning is translated and diffused from one actor to another at different
levels till it takes effect on the target stakeholders. It can be regarded as a
hybrid process covering policy decision-making and implementation.
One critical challenge during this process is that the authentic meaning
of the original policy would fade after a long travel through different
organizational levels and ambiguity of the policy may increase. This is
also known as a recent metaphor of “travel of ideas” proposed by
Mukhtarov (2014) indicating that policy coherence and stability are
difficult to ensure as the policy travels.
The translation of CE policies is not exceptional. Bolger & Doyon
(2019) underlined that the leadership at a national level and policy
coherence across levels of government are crucial elements to imple­
menting CE. In the literature, ambitious recovery rates of CDW are
determined as national policy visions by governments, and diverse CE
action plans are developed at a high managerial level. However, little
information is available on how exactly these high-level visions would
be realized by local industrial actors. Furthermore, some of these re­
covery targets are proposed inappropriately, for instance, the definition
of some waste recovery actions can be interpreted differently and leads
to confusing situations where the recovery contributions of certain ac­
tors are not taken into account (Arm et al., 2017).
On the other hand, policy evaluation is critical to forming a virtuous
policy-making cycle. A newly proposed policy is never perfect because
the information and knowledge are limited at the formulation stage. To
improve the policy, governments can learn from success, as well as from
failures and unexpected outcomes (Bolger & Doyon, 2019). Besides,
there might be a considerable time gap between the policy formulation
and implementation (Calvo et al., 2014). During this gap, the imple­
mentation environment can change especially considering the extensive
life span and multi-stakeholders involved in a construction project.
Therefore, the adaptive adjustment of public policies is essential to keep
the policy up to date.
However, evaluating the performance of a policy is not a trivial task.
An inherent policy-making problem of CDW management at a national
level is the compilation of reliable statistics to inform and monitor the
extant policies (Gálvez-Martos et al., 2018). Many relevant studies
underscored the important role of a compatible database in evaluating
circular material flows (Ortlepp et al., 2016; Stephan & Athanassiadis,
Y. Yu et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359

Fig. 4. Bi-directional CE policy-making mechanism

2018), however, there is a lack of policy monitoring systems supported value chains towards CE by enabling greater material and energy
by accurate and reliable databases. Moreover, policy evaluation always reduction and supporting circular business innovation. Thus, intro­
involves not only bureaucrats and policymakers within the government, ducing such a bi-directional mechanism can be viewed as a stepping
but also non-governmental members of policy subsystems. The stan­ stone towards advanced multi-level CE policy integration in the built
dardization of feedback information becomes a problem because the CE environment.
yardsticks applied by different actors may vary and most of them are not
designed to be integrated. In other words, there is a lack of consistent
4.3. Future research directions
and comprehensive evaluation indicators for CE policy performance at
different organizational levels (Paschoalin et al., 2020; Taboada et al.,
In this section, two future research directions are proposed: (1)
2020). Therefore, a transparent, collaborative, and streamlined envi­
develop CE policy packages to accelerate CE implementation from
ronment where actors can communicate and evaluate policy perfor­
different aspects, and (2) apply ICT-based solutions to create a stream­
mance is in great demand.
lined, transparent, and collaborative policy-making environment.
To further clarify the interrelationships between policy translation
and evaluation, we develop a bi-directional CE policy-making mecha­
4.3.1. CE policy package
nism in Fig. 4. It articulates the synergetic process in which policy
The development of a CE policy package is the first step to formulate
translation and evaluation are linked as a coherent approach to
integrated CE policy systems. Such a policy package comprises a com­
achieving effective CE policy-making at macro-, meso-, and micro-
bination of diverse policy instruments to address CE challenges on
levels. This journey of policy translation is summarized as the process
technical, economic, and social aspects. The literature review showed
starting from national policy visions, through regional policy guidelines,
that policymakers aim to provide more efficient policy options to covert
and resulting in tangible business actions. All these elements construct a
the extant waste-centric policy system to an integrated design-out-of-
complex multi-level environment where policies are implemented from
waste policy system. Therefore, the policies supporting CDW preven­
the national government to local target actors in a top-down manner. By
tion and minimization can be prioritized according to the hierarchy of
contrast, policy monitoring and evaluation often occur in a bottom-up
circular principles. However, it should not be misunderstood that the CE
manner by which the feedback from local actors is raised, then the
transition will be achieved solely relying on waste minimization.
feedback is organized and captured through regional supply chain
Although it is prioritized, all circular principles should be integrated and
evaluation by policymakers at the top level. Eventually, some may lead
absorbed as a whole into the policy-making system because different
to the reconceptualization of the initial problem and policy adjustments
circular mechanisms have advantages at different project life-cycle
to different extents.
phases. For instance, waste prevention strategies are more likely to
This mechanism adds value to the integrated CE policy-making cycle
take effect at the designing phase while most untreated CDW has to be
from an inter-organizational perspective and reveals the critical steps
recycled or backfilled at the EoL phase. Thus, it is imperative to admit
that policy translation and evaluation take towards effective and effi­
that there is no one-fits-all recipe for CE. The circular strategy of a
cient CE policy-making. For the first time, we propose this bi-directional
construction project should be carefully designed to follow the pattern of
mechanism for CE policy-making in the construction industry in order to
material consumption of each construction and demolition stage. More
raise the attention to the need of implementing CE policies by consid­
research is encouraged to investigate the policy interrelationships
ering policy translation and evaluation as an integrated approach. As
within a CE policy package by linking demolition projects with newly
suggested by many scholars (Milios, 2018; Nussholz et al., 2019;
initiated projects in a closed-loop value chain.
Campbell-Johnston et al., 2019; Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020),
Next, new market-based policy instruments need to be proposed to
multi-level policy integration is in demand to gravitate construction
foster the secondary material market. The key to closing the

11
Y. Yu et al.
construction material loop is re-directing qualified secondary materials
into the construction material market. The subsidy policy instrument
would enable long-term and reliable economic support for circular
business model innovation, especially for the mediators who are actively
connecting demolition projects and construction projects, such as CDW
recycling factories and demolition companies. The secondary materials
can never be competitive in the market if recovery costs are high and
material quality is not ensured. To this end, economic policy in­
terventions can not only help to regulate the price of secondary mate­
rials in the forms of subsidy allocation and tax reduction but also
stimulate circular technology innovation to improve the quality of sec­
ondary materials.
However, it can be against the original purpose of implementing CE
if the economic support is provided only based on the economic and
environmental contributions brought by the circular activities without
considering the original production model. In fact, extra manufacturing
processes are often required to produce a circular product and the extra
environmental and economic impacts, such as energy impact, brought
by circular activities may partially or fully offset the circular benefits.
This is known as “Circular Economy Rebound” (Zink & Geyer, 2017).
Similarly, the “Circular Premium” introduced by D’Adamo & Lupi
(2021) is a terminology that measures the price difference between
circular and normal products. These two concepts can potentially be
integrated with LCA methods to set a comparative baseline between
primary and circular production systems. In such a way, conscious
policy decisions can be made regarding whether it is more beneficial to
subsidize certain secondary materials or promote a new choice of virgin
materials based on a comprehensive overview of the production system.
Therefore, we recommend that policymakers can take these concepts
into account when proposing economic policy interventions in order to
determine the extent to which the recycled materials need to be incen­
tivized and promote the products that can efficiently generate mean­
ingful CE value.
On the other hand, policies help to create demand for secondary
materials. More policies in other forms, such as GPP, social communi­
cation, regular training, and education programs, should be diffused to
raise public awareness and acceptance of CE (Lu & Tam, 2013; Ding
et al., 2016; Alhola et al., 2019; Bao & Lu et al., 2020). To increase the
demand for reused/recycled materials, we also suggest providing
adaptive quality assessment schemas for secondary materials. The
functionality and quality of reused/recycled materials are difficult to
assess because they are not what the current quality standards are
designed for (Rodriguez et al., 2014; Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020). The
on-site material audit can help to analyze material value to customize
the evaluation processes for specific cases. For instance, a demolition
contractor can optimize deconstruction processes and ensure waste
purity and quality based on material inspection if the client recognizes
CE as project requirements and allocate more time and benefits to the
EoL phase.
In summary, we suggest proposing CE policies in a package form to
shift the waste-centric policy paradigm towards the design-out-of-waste
one, and regulate supply-demand dynamics of secondary materials by
considering the synergistic effect created by a combination of diverse
policy instruments. The ultimate goal of developing CE policy packages
is to generate meaningful CE value based on a comprehensive under­
standing of the circular cost-benefit mechanism in a construction life-
cycle.
4.3.2. ICT-based policy-making
ICT-based solutions attract increasing attention in the public sector
because these solutions enhance business-making performance and
streamline organizational activities with less time and costs by reducing
12
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
principal-agent problems and transactions costs (Cordella, 2009). The
innovation of ICT fuels digital government transformation by creating a
streamlined, transparent, and collaborative environment for actors at
multiple levels, and supports continuous evaluation linked to the
traceability of actions (Cordella & Bonina, 2012). The wide adoption of
ICT in the public sector has followed technical and strategic solutions
based on the private sector experiences to improve efficiency and pro­
ductivity of government performance, including policy-making.
Although the momentum of adopting ICT solutions in the public
sector is growing, the actual ICT implementation is problematic and
subject to frequent failures (Cordella & Bonina, 2012; Gil-Garcia and
Flores-Zúñiga, 2020). There are complex future challenges in exper­
imenting with ICT-based solutions and models for collaborative gover­
nance and participatory policy modeling, and socio-economic impact
assessment (Misuraca et al., 2012). To foster the adoption of ICT, the
knowledge-sharing between public and private sectors is critical.
Considerable research efforts have been made to enhance ICT
adoption in the construction sector, such as the Big Data Analytic
technology (Bilal et al., 2016; Li et al., 2020b), Internet of Things
(Zhong et al., 2017; Arka et al., 2020), and Geographical Information
Systems (Mastrucci et al., 2017; Arciniegas et al., 2019). The reviewed
papers stressed the importance of incorporating GIS to analyze un­
certainties and dynamics of CDW flows under different policy scenarios
in future research (Hiete et al., 2011; Ding et al., 2016; Volk et al., 2019).
However, it is not clear how exactly ICT would contribute to CE
policy-making processes in the construction sector. Although the liter­
ature presents various mathematical methods that can support the
predictive quantification of CDW, their potential functionalities are not
explicitly demonstrated concerning CE policy evaluation. Therefore,
innovating ICT-based solutions to streamline and integrate complex
processes of CE policy-making is an indispensable future research di­
rection in the construction industry.
Besides, some studies provided predictive indications of policy
decision-making based on scenario analysis. From a methodological
point of view, they mostly adopted local sensitivity analysis to investi­
gate the response of the output around one point of interest in the model
input space. Typically, the local sensitivity analysis is conducted by
varying one model input at a time while the remaining model inputs
remain as the baseline value (Saltelli et al., 1999). However, it is
insufficient to explicitly show the interconnections among different in­
puts and outputs by applying this type of one-factor-at-a-time analysis
when a larger exploration of the model input space is sought based on a
range of uncertainties (Saltelli et al., 2007). As the level of complex
interconnections between inputs and outputs increases, one may not
anticipate model behaviors, thus, failing to interpret why the model
achieves the right outcomes for the right reasons (Beven & Cloke, 2012).
By contrast, Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) contributes to exploring
the entire space of input factors and identifies the inputs to obtain
additional insights into the inter-relationships among inputs and outputs
(Satelli et al., 2007; Anderson et al., 2014). It provides a holistic over­
view on the influence of inputs-outputs as opposed to a local scenario
view of partial derivatives as in local sensitivity analysis. Some applied it
to translate risks into policy actions based on robust LCA studies and
showed that GSA is fundamental to guarantee a complete understanding
of 1) the internal structure of the simulation model, 2) the importance of
uncertain model inputs, 3) and the interactions among them (Cucurachi
et al., 2016). Therefore, we consider GSA as a valuable method in future
research that can potentially support the investigation of the complex
cause-effect mechanism of CE policy packages revealing the underlying
conflicts and trade-offs.
On the way towards ICT-based CE policy-making, there are three
general challenges. First, we need to be aware of a principal difference
Y. Yu et al.
between public and private sectors before applying ICT based on the
experiences learned from private sectors, namely, public sectors aim to
achieve social value by balancing interests among various sides through
policy-making while private sectors often only aim for individual
monetary benefits (Cordella & Bonina, 2012). Therefore, the solution
should be provided by considering the special value proposition for
public sectors. Second, ICT techniques are not yet integrated to a suffi­
cient level to fully support complex policy-making tasks (Demestichas &
Daskalakis, 2020). The lack of interoperability, data accessibility, and
information standardization hampers the integration of ICT. More
research is required to fill the technological gaps and provide a robust
technical background where coherent and intelligent decision support
can be realized in the policy-making domain. Third, there is a lack of
data management support (Yan et al., 2015; Volk et al., 2019). Although
information-sharing contributes to developing effective governmental
strategies, most private actors are reluctant to share business-related
information because it can be abused and hazard business competi­
tiveness. More interdisciplinary research is required to create a trans­
parent and trustful information-sharing environment and enable
cross-fertilization to bridge the gaps between various stakeholders
(Misuraca et al., 2012).
5. Conclusions
Through a systematic literature review, this study has investigated
the CE implementation in the construction industry from a policy-
making perspective. In particular, we made an explorative attempt to
align the state-of-the-art with the classic five-stage policy cycle and
provided an integrated CE policy-making framework. However, it is
found that little “internal” information is provided regarding how the
governments make policy decisions in practice while scientific contri­
butions mostly come in the form of “external” theoretical justifications
supporting policy decision-making. Therefore, we refined the definition
of each policy cycle stage and proposed a literature category based on
(1) The vital role of CE in policy agenda-setting, (2) Alternatives in
policy formulation, (3) Methodologies for policy decision-making, (4)
Evidence collected from policy implementation, and (5) Knowledge
basis for policy evaluation. The proposed classification system can be
regarded as a coherent baseline to understand the state-of-the-art of CE
policy-making in the construction industry from a theoretical lens.
Based on a global overview of CE initiatives, we found that the vital
role of policy support in CE transition is well-recognized globally. Most
CE policies are country-based with specific policy characteristics and we
summarized the major forms and functions of current CE policies pro­
posed for the built environment. The results also showed that ICT-based
solutions play a vital role in policy decision-making and evaluation by
providing predictive insights into policy effects. However, there is still a
lack of an effective regulatory system to implement CE initiatives in
practice. Most studies only investigated CE policy-making from one
particular perspective without considering the potential connections
between different policy stages in a broader operational context of the
entire policy cycle. To this end, we identified the focal research gap
regarding insufficient policy integration from two perspectives, namely,
process-wise and content-wise policy integration. To provide a guideline
for policy process integration and deepen the understanding of the
iterative nature of the policy cycle, a conceptual framework of a bi-
directional policy-making mechanism was proposed. This mechanism
exemplifies the functioning of a policy cycle through different organi­
zational levels and raises the attention to the need of implementing CE
policies by integrating policy translation and evaluation as a holistic
cycle.
13
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359
Furthermore, we suggested developing CE policy packages to shift
the waste-centric policy paradigm towards the design-out-of-waste one
and regulate supply-demand dynamics of secondary materials by
considering the synergistic effect generated by a combination of diverse
policy instruments. This suggestion could effectively address the chal­
lenge of insufficient content-wise policy integration. Finally, the adop­
tion of ICT-based solutions can be valuable to create a streamlined,
transparent, and collaborative environment for process-wise policy
integration. We encourage more interdisciplinary research to explore
this topic and address identified challenges based on the combination of
quantitative modeling results and qualitative evidence observed from
actual policy implementation.
In conclusion, we provided a structured approach to conducting CE
policy-making research based on the policy cycle. This review un­
derlines the importance of understanding CE policy-making as an inte­
grated and dynamic cycle with intertwined connections among different
policy-making stages. Scientifically, it addresses the research gap of
insufficient understanding of CE policy-making processes in the con­
struction industry and sheds light on future research directions. Practi­
cally, the results serve as a theoretical guideline for policymakers and
industrial practitioners to understand the more complex nature of CE
policy-making in practice.
The review focused on the interdisciplinary research nexus of Cir­
cular Economy, Construction Management, and Public Policy. The nexus
complexity, together with the nature of the literature review, led to
limitations for the research. Our literature research was limited to the
WoS digital literature database. Although we conducted a first-degree
backward citation analysis, some relevant scientific materials may still
be missing from our shortlist due to the searching limitation. For
instance, the method of Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat
(SWOT) analysis can be valuable to provide policy alternatives for CDW
management (Yuan, 2013) while Hossain et al. (2018) applied LCA to
develop a social sustainability assessment method for recycled con­
struction materials including an impact category of support from the
government. To improve the result’s comprehensiveness and robustness,
future research can consider (1) evaluating the completeness of the
paper shortlist by comparing the searching results from WoS and Scopus,
and (2) incorporating policy documentation analysis and survey analysis
with public and private actors. The second limitation concerns the
appropriateness of categorizing the literature according to the five-stage
policy cycle. It is challenging to fit all the collected literature into each
policy stage within the cycle because a limited number of studies were
conducted with the awareness of the entire policy cycle. To bridge the
gap between policy development and implementation, more research is
required to validate the proposed theoretical policy framework against
more approaches taken by policymakers coming from different
geographical areas.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106359.
Y. Yu et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 183 (2022) 106359

Appendix

Table 2
List of collected papers
No. Reference Region Summary

The vital role of CE in agenda-setting

1 (Hao et al., 2020) China & EU Policy comparison between China and EU
2 (Mahpour, 2018) Iran Barriers to adopting CE for CDW management
3 (Blaisi, 2019) Saudi Arabia Roadmap for sustainable CDW management
4 (Bolger & Doyon, 2019) Australia & Explore local government strategies to support CE
Sweden
5 (Bilal et al., 2020) N/S Enablers and barriers to CE implementation in the built environment
6 (Karhu & Linkola, 2019) Finland Identification of policy targets for construction CE
Alternatives in policy formulation
7 (Gálvez-Martos et al., 2018) EU CDW management practices and implementation difficulties
8 (Huang et al., 2018) China Promote CDW management through 3R principles
9 (Campbell-Johnston et al., Netherlands Barriers of CDW management at a city level
2019)
10 (Nussholz et al., 2019) Denmark & The role of public policies in CE transition
Sweden
11 (Gorecki et al., 2019) N/S Strategies for effective CE implementation in the construction industry
12 (Rodriguez et al., 2015) EU Sustainable assessment of CDW management performance
13 (Quaranta et al., 2010) Argentina Safe management of CDW containing hazardous substances
14 (Rodriguez et al., 2014) Spain Quality assessment standards for recycled CDW
15 (Duan et al., 2016) Mainland China Suggestions of hazardous CDW management
16 (Heurkens & Dabrowski, 2020) Netherlands Governance of CE transition in metropolitan areas
17 (Ghaffar et al., 2020) UK Analysis of an integrated CDW management system
18 (Behera et al., 2014) N/S Review of sustainable applications of recycled concrete aggregates regarding material quality aspects
Methodologies for policy decision-making
19 (Li et al., 2020a) Mainland China Policy instrument choices for sustainable CDW management
20 (Volk et al., 2019) Germany Assessment of CE policy impacts
21 (Yan, 2015) N/S Scenario analysis for managerial sustainable policy implications
22 (Yuan et al., 2012) Mainland China Evaluation of waste reduction strategies applied to CDW supply chains
23 (Calvo et al., 2014) Spain Scenario analysis of CDW management under economic policies
24 (Hiete & Schultmann 2011) Germany Scenario analysis of CDW policy interventions
25 (Trochu et al., 2020) Canada Regulation assessment of eco-efficient CDW logistic networks
26 (Long, et al., 2020) Mainland China Evaluation of governmental reward-penalty mechanism for CDW management
27 (Ma & Zhang, 2020) Mainland China Investigation of governmental incentive policies for CDW management
28 (Su et al., 2020) Mainland China Scenario analysis of economic policy instruments for CDW management
29 (Shi et al., 2020) Mainland China Scenario analysis of carbon policies applied to CDW supply chains
30 (Zhang et al., 2017) Mainland China Scenario analysis of an interactive strategy based on carbon policies
31 (Ding et al., 2016) Mainland China Environmental impact assessment of green CDW management
Evidence collected from policy implementation
32 (Bao & Lu, 2020) Mainland China Lessons learned from CDW policy implementation
33 (Ma et al., 2020) Mainland China Challenges of CDW policy implementation
34 (Lu & Tam, 2013) HK China Analyze effect of CDW management policies
35 (Tam et al., 2012) HK China Implementation results of sustainable CDW management systems
36 (Poon et al., 2013) HK China Quantification the impact of CDW management policies
37 (Arm et al., 2017) EU Discussion about waste recovery target set for CE
38 (Yeheyis et al., 2012) Canada Overview of sustainable construction CDW management consisting of regulatory frameworks and building rating
systems
Knowledge basis for policy evaluation
39 (Liu et al., 2020) Mainland China Life cycle assessment of CDW carbon emission
40 (Ram et al., 2020) India Environmental life cycle assessment of CDW recycling
41 (Di Maria et al., 2018) Belgium Life cycle assessment of CDW supporting sustainable policy-making
42 (Foster & Kreinin, 2020) EU Development of circular environmental impact indicators for cultural heritage buildings
43 (Paschoalin et al., 2020) Brazil Environmental indicators for CDW management
44 (Taboada et al., 2020) EU Indicators evaluating the performance of CDW management policies
45 (Verhagen et al., 2021) Netherlands Quantification of the percentage of reusable secondary CDW
46 (Stephan & Athanassiadis, Australia Quantity estimation of waste replacement flows
2018)
47 (Ortlepp et al., 2016) Germany Quantification methods for non-domestic material stocks
48 (Arora et al., 2020) Singapore Estimation of waste flows and CDW policy assessment
49 (Coelho & De Brito, 2013) Portugal Economic viability analysis of CDW plant without government policy intervention

Notes: N/S – Not Specified; EU – European Union; HK – Hong Kong

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