Circular Economy Rebound Effect: Theoretical Implications and a Research Agenda

The Circular Economy (CE) is a paradigm aimed at slowing and closing resource loops, and reducing resource flows, to achieve environmental, economic, and social benefits. Notwithstanding its current widespread adoption in manufacturing, the effectiveness of circular manufacturing (CM) strategies could be hampered by the occurrence of the so-called rebound effects (REs). RE is defined as an undesirable increase in consumption of a resource due to improved efficiency. The identification and prevention of REs’ occurrence is crucial to ensure the effectiveness of CM strategies. Although CE’s RE is gaining momentum in literature, there is still a limited understanding of how to explore this topic and implement related avoidance, mitigation and/or remediation actions. To this concern, this paper aims to unveil and systematize the main research gaps and to open rooms for further studies in this domain. To address this objective, a systematic literature has been conducted, investigating all of the five previously identified dimensions composing the twofold domain CE and REs (i.e., business models, drivers, product lifecycle management, circular manufacturing ecosystem, and socio-economic aspects). The analysis of the selected sources allowed to identify seven gap categories. Finally, from a criticality prioritization of the gap categories, a research agenda has been developed, indicating as priority industrial applications, technologies potential and performance assessment.