Empirical study of the impact of economic, social and environmental predictors on the level of circularity of European countries
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31558/2307-2318.2025.3.11Keywords:
circular economy, sustainable development, economic predictors, social predictors, environmental predictors, pairwise correlation analysis, European countriesAbstract
The article is devoted to the empirical study of the relationship between economic, social and environmental determinants and the level of circularity of European countries. The relevance of the study is due to the provision of a comprehensive analysis of factors affecting the transition to a circular economy in the context of aggravating global environmental problems and the European Union's aspiration for sustainable development.
The article, based on the methodology of pair correlation analysis, examines the impact of several economic (resource productivity, energy productivity, emission intensity), social (social protection spending, share of the population connected to secondary water treatment, share of personnel engaged in R&D) and environmental (level of recycling of household expenses, index of clean energy consumption, level). Water use) predictors for integrated indices of economic, social and environmental circularity. The study's results identified key factors that have the most significant impact on the level of circularity in its various dimensions. For economic circularity, the most significant are resource productivity, energy productivity and emission intensity; for social circularity, the share of personnel engaged in R&D, the level of spending on social protection and the share of the population connected to secondary water treatment; for environmental circularity, the level of household waste recycling, the index of energy consumption purity and the level of water use. Based on the analysis, conclusions were formulated on the need for an integrated approach to stimulating the circular economy. Prominent areas of further research using more complex econometric methods were identified.
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