Barriers to Adopting Digital Technologies to Implement Circular Economy Practices in the Construction Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

The construction industry is a resource- and energy-intensive sector, and, thus, it has been criticised due to rising environmental concerns. As a result, it has gained heightened interest in the concept of the circular economy (CE) over the last decade due to its ability to promote the slowing, reducing, and closing production and consumption cycles of materials and products used in construction projects. Current research studies suggest that digital technologies may enhance the construction industry’s ability to integrate the concept of CE into its practices. However, a clear understanding of digital technology (DT)-related barriers that hinder practical implementation of CE appears to be lacking within the sector. Thus, this study aims to identify the barriers to adopting DTs to implement CE practices in the construction industry. A systematic literature review was conducted by reviewing twenty-eight (28) relevant papers published until March 2024 in the Scopus and Web of Science databases. The VOS viewer software (version 1.6.11) was used to perform a co-occurrence analysis of keywords to identify new and popular study areas in the field. The content analysis was used to analyse the significant barriers to adapting DTs to implement CE in the construction industry; frequency and Pareto analyses were used to determine the most critical obstacles. This study identified thirty-seven (37) barriers to using DTs to implement CE, categorised into nine areas: organisational, infrastructure, regulatory, standardisation, investment, nature of the construction industry, technological, stakeholder, and data-related barriers. Of these thirty-seven barriers, nineteen were identified as critical barriers based on Pareto analysis. These findings will benefit construction practitioners and policymakers who want to adopt DTs to integrate CE practices in the construction industry.