Circular Economy: A Pathway to Integrated Value Creation for Business and Society

Abstract

Amid growing environmental pressures and the pressing demand to advance sustainable development, the circular economy (CE) has positioned itself as a transformative business approach capable of safeguarding favourable ecosystem conditions through the application of key R-strategies. This research analyses the impact of corporative transition towards CE that respects planetary boundaries on the creation of tangible and intangible value for companies. To achieve our objectives and test our hypotheses, we employed an unbalanced panel dataset comprising 44,756 observations over the period 2013–2022, involving 7010 multinational and multisectoral companies. Our empirical findings show the significant and positive impact of CE transitions on firms' market value and growth opportunities, as well as on the probability of obtaining an award, intangible recognition for the potential value that CE may offer to society and the environment. Furthermore, our complementary analysis highlights CE paradigms as a pathway in which, without importance of corporate advance—emerging, developing, mature or leading—value is created. Additionally, complementary estimations by subsamples of industries with high and low environmental sensitivity indicate stronger tangible value creation in environmentally sensitive industries, while the intangible value was more salient among less environmentally exposed industries. These empirical results are robust across various methodological specifications; these include GMM estimations to mitigate potential endogeneity concerns. Our findings provide empirical evidence to understand the potential benefits of the transition to CE, especially in relation to the intangible recognition that it entails for companies to create value for society in accordance with the notion of safe operating space.