Environment strategy: behaviour changes needed to achieve Scotland's goals for circular economy

3. Approach

The methodology consists of a sequence of qualitative approaches combining a critical assessment of literature-based evidence and stakeholder engagement. The methods are focused on the identification and prioritisation of circular consumption behaviours linked to key economic sectors (food, textiles and transport), and the assessment of their interrelationships with drivers, barriers and the interventions needed to incentivise these behaviours.

3.1 Rapid Evidence Assessment to Prioritise Circular Consumption Behaviours

A rapid evidence assessment was conducted to identify the behaviour changes with the greatest potential to support Scotland’s circular economy goals. The assessment followed a two-stage approach. First, a search was undertaken to identify existing frameworks of circular consumer behaviours, with the aim of developing a comprehensive list of relevant behaviours. Second, a search was carried out to gather evidence on the environmental, social, and economic impacts of these behaviours. This evidence was then considered alongside other key factors to determine which behaviours could be prioritised for promotion by the Scottish Government.

3.1.1 Search 1 Circular Behaviour Frameworks

To support the development of a comprehensive list of circular consumer behaviours, a series of scoping searches was undertaken to identify existing frameworks or inventories that describe and categorise such behaviours. These searches combined terms such as “circular”, “consumer”, and “behaviour”, along with common synonyms like “household(s)” and “practices”. Searches were conducted using Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar. A snowballing approach was also applied, reviewing both references cited within relevant studies and those that cited them. Studies were included if they aimed to comprehensively describe circular consumer behaviours and were published within the past 10 years.

3.1.2 Search 2 Impacts of Circular Behaviours

Our second search focused on gathering evidence on the environmental, social, and economic impacts of the circular consumer behaviours identified through the initial framework search. We therefore developed a search string using the behavioural terms from search 1, combined with terms that capture key environmental, social, and economic impacts. It also contained sectoral terms to refine the search for key sectors of interest to the Scottish Government, agreed with the project Steering Group, to keep the size of the search management within the project timeframe. Table 8 (Appendix 1) outlines the combination of terms used.

We searched in two academic databases, the Web of Knowledge and Scopus, which combined with results from informal searches using Google Scholar, resulted in 5783 records. After deduplicating, we conducted an initial sift of 4894 records based on the following criteria:

Include as priority

• Studies that assess the environmental, social, or economic impact of circular consumer behaviours (as individuals or as a group)

Include as secondary interest

• Studies that assess drivers / barriers to circular behaviour adoption by consumers
• Studies that assess the effectiveness of interventions to enhance circular behaviour adoption by consumers

Exclude

• Studies that assess the impact of behaviour change by businesses or other institutions
• Studies that assess the impact of changes to products and services

3.1.3 Prioritising Circular Behaviours

We considered evidence on impacts from search 2 alongside other key factors to determine which behaviours could be prioritised for promotion by the Scottish Government. These factors and the evidence were discussed and agreed with the project Steering Group.

To prioritise circular economy behaviours, we applied four criteria:

• Environmental impact: Behaviours should contribute meaningfully to Scotland’s environmental objectives, particularly in reducing emissions from the waste sector and reducing the quantity of new material brought into the economy. This evidence is derived from the results of search 2.
• Policy alignment: Selected behaviours should directly support the objectives related to the circular economy prioritises of the Environment Strategy, Circular Economy and Waste Route Map, and Climate Change Plan. It should limit duplication of behaviours targeted under existing public engagement campaigns such as the Net Zero Engagement Strategy. This is informed by analysing relevant Scottish Government policy documents and input from the Steering Group on this evolving policy area.
• Behavioural feasibility: Consideration is given to how likely individuals are to adopt behaviours, including issues of social acceptability, capability, and practical opportunity. This is informed by the relevant literature.
• Sector alignment: Selected behaviours should relate to one of the priority sectors identified based on discussion and inputs from the project steering group.

More detail on the four criteria above is presented in Appendix 1.

3.2 Rapid Evidence Assessment of Behavioural Drivers, Barriers and Interventions

The rapid evidence assessment (REA) of drivers, barriers and interventions (titled the ‘interventions REA’ throughout sections 3.2 and 4.3) reviewed the alignment with existing Scottish policies and initiatives and explored the potential gaps in policy delivery where new interventions may be required. It follows a design like that of the ‘behaviours REA’ (presented in section 3.1 with the findings reported in section 5) and focusses on interventions to incentivise the priority circular behaviours identified in the behaviours REA.

To methodologically place the review within the Scottish policy context, the interventions REA included an informal/ non-structured review of Scottish Government circular economy reports and existing Scottish policy and initiatives that could be leveraged in achieving changes in the priority behaviours.

The informal search was followed by a formal/ structured review of academic papers chosen for specificity to priority behaviours (meaning that these or similar behaviours were evaluated within each paper) and applicability to the Scottish context (i.e., the target population is like the Scottish public and thus interventions could be reasonably undertaken given Scottish policy context).

The interventions REA search string (Table 9 in Appendix 2) was adapted from that of the behavioural REA to ensure the specificity of interventions to the priority behaviours previously identified. Whereas the search string used in the behavioural REA focused on identifying behaviours, the search string here was modified to better capture the literature examining interventions relevant to identified key behaviours, and this is reflected in the ‘Impacts’ category of the search string (Table 9 in Appendix 2). The search string yielded 679 results from Scopus and the Web of Science, with 200 papers selected for further screening and ultimately 54 papers included for in-depth analysis. For the formal review, a date range was set covering the past five years to maximise relevance to the present day and at the same time capture a manageable number of papers given project time constraints. Countries that were not comparable to the Scottish context were excluded. Scottish and UK-based examples were most prioritised, followed by Northern and Western Europe, and the European Union (EU) more broadly. Where appropriate, examples from other highly industrialised countries (e.g., United States, Australia, Japan) were considered. These countries were prioritised either due to similarities in key factors influencing consumer behaviour, such as income, cultural norms, infrastructure and policy/governance structures or because some of them represent models that Scotland aspires to follow in these areas.

In addition to the evaluation of papers returned by the search string inquiry, an informal search was conducted of Scottish Government-specific reports and grey literature to find additional interventions, as well as existing Scottish policy and initiatives that could be leveraged in achieving changes in priority behaviours. Papers for review prioritised studies conducted with explicitly circular frameworks in mind. As circular economy remains a novel concept, an informal literature review was conducted to also include papers that focused on the priority behaviours, but without explicit mention of circular economy. Papers were also considered for review via a snowballing approach, and the five-year time constraint was not applied here to allow the inclusion of less recent papers that were still relevant to the present policy landscape and goals of the interventions REA.

Regarding analysis of interventions discussed, those that are positive, i.e., encourage consumers to engage in a specific behaviour rather than deprive themselves of something, were prioritised when recommending interventions for behaviour change and also reflected in the choice of priority behaviours. A recent report (OECD, 2025) stated that public support for more sustainable behavioural change was bolstered by framing climate change in terms of opportunities, rather than avoidance or depravation. Policy interventions are therefore framed as positively as possible (i.e., encouraging individuals to take certain action, rather than discouraging them from doing something). It is acknowledged, however, that in order to maximise the impact of Scottish Government interventions promoting circular economy, those that are negative or discourage individuals from performing certain actions are also necessary, as is reflected in current Scottish policies, such as the single use plastic cup charge. Emphasising alternative actions for consumers can aid in promoting uptake of these actions and put a positive spin on priority behaviour changes triggered by bans or other negative type interventions. This will be discussed in further detail as relevant to the framing of the positive or negative type interventions recommended in this REA.

In terms of applicability of interventions to the Scottish context, interventions included those that align with existing policies and initiatives, and those that would require new policy, knowledge, and infrastructure.

Policies are also discussed in terms of prioritisation along Maitre-Ekern and Dalhammar’s (MED) (2019) hierarchy of circular economy behaviours, summarised in Figure 2. In this paper, the authors created a ‘hierarchy of consumption behaviours’ to support European Union policymaking along circular economy goals. Avoiding consumption is considered most preferable in terms of impact as it prevents waste at the source (if an object is not acquired, it cannot be wasted) and is therefore of highest priority. Maintenance and repair behaviour is placed second as consumers likely already own many of the products they need and might otherwise purchase and should therefore aim to prolong the life of existing items. Third is sharing behaviour and fourth leasing. Although the authors do not explicitly mention why sharing is placed ahead of leasing, sharing generally implies a more flexible, shorter-term usage structure without individual ownership. This means that in a sharing context, fewer items may be needed to service a community versus in a leasing context. For when products need to be purchased, purchasing second-hand is fourth in the hierarchy, as it does not require new manufacturing, and buying quality goods is fifth since that behaviour requires new resources to manufacture, though high quality of goods implies they will last longer and ideally be easily reparable. Finally, recirculating goods is the least preferred behaviour as this is resource-intensive and takes place only if the preferred behaviour i.e., avoiding discarding items, which is the goal of circular economy interventions (Maitre-Ekern and Dalhammar, 2019), including within the scope of the interventions REA, does not occur.

Graphic text below:

An inverted pyramid showing a sustainability hierarchy, ranked from most preferred (Avoid, Maintain and Repair, Share, Lease) to least preferred (Buy second‑hand, Buy quality, Recirculate)

3.3 Participatory Analysis of Behavioural Drivers, Barriers and Interventions

The potential effectiveness and public acceptability of the interventions identified in the assessment of literature-based evidence were further explored in the Scottish context using a stakeholder participatory workshop.

The focus was on reduce and reuse behaviours (with related recycling), namely:

• reducing the use/avoiding the purchase of single use products;
• minimising acquisition impact e.g., buying ‘circular’ products such as those made of recycled materials or ‘upcycled’;
• Optimising and prolonging the lifetime of products through maintenance, storing or engaging in repair activities;
• Prioritising redistribution, sharing and leasing to buying, and second-hand or upcycled products to new/not circular ones;
• allowing products to re-circulate, allowing recycling focus, where directly related to reduce and reuse (at times linked to decluttering) behaviours.

The interventions discussed were those identified in the REA and covered both direct (e.g., improving education, access to infrastructure, imposing charges) and indirect (e.g., improving provision of infrastructure, regulation for sustainability labelling and certifications) mechanisms to incentivise circular consumer behaviours.

The study did not aim for representativity of the sample and the required number of participants (achieved) was due to a balance between the complexity of the topic, practical considerations related to workshop duration and the corresponding amount of time for each participant to provide meaningful input. A purposeful approach was taken to identify the participants based on developing a long list and selecting a relatively diverse set of stakeholders with the aim of having a deliberative discussion across a broad range of organisations/stakeholder perspectives and to include stakeholders with interests in the key relevant sectors and related to the key intervention types. The long list was compiled to include more than one stakeholder from each of the targeted (types of) organisations, with narrowing down based on ensuring the representation of each type of organisations.

The interventions REA did not suggest certain socio-demographics to be applied as sampling criteria (e.g., gender, age and household composition) and no stratification was involved in this type of approach. However, as the stakeholders expressed their views as both experts/ practitioners (where their views would be representative of their organisations) and consumers (whose behaviours may be influenced by interventions), we aimed to ensure diversity also based on demographics, information provided by the participants who answered a short questionnaire on gender, education, number of children living in the household by each participant).

There were ten stakeholders involved representing policy decisionmakers, policy analysts, nongovernmental consumer organisations, academia, and private consulting in the field of circularity and waste, establishing a well-designed sample for the purpose of the workshop, which focused on consumers.

The research was GDPR compliant and followed the ISO 9001:2015 quality management system for auditing experimental and analytical practices. Participants signed a consent form before the workshop and were informed about their right to withdraw from the study up to the point that their contribution was anonymised.

The workshop was structured as a deliberative discussion around key elements - behaviours and interventions, drivers and barriers. Prompts were used to ensure that all REA identified priority behaviours and interventions were discussed.

In addition to a thematic analysis of workshop findings, which is the main analytical approach used in this study, COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation - Behaviour)^[3] and the Behavioural Change Wheel (BCW) framework^[4] (Michie et al., 2011) are used in combination with the Maitre-Ekern and Dalhammar Circular Behaviour Hierarchy (2019) and the prioritisation of behaviours developed in the behaviours REA to create and systematise a matrix of circular behaviours and interventions with associated drivers and barriers. The main purpose of the matrix is to provide a schematical representation of the thematic analysis’ findings. An additional, yet secondary, objective is to further validate the results against key behavioural frameworks currently used to characterise interventions targeting specific behaviours.

3.4 Methodological Limitations

With the suitability of the proposed approaches justified above, and their robustness demonstrated in several other projects by the project team and evidenced in the relevant literature, there are, however, limitations to these qualitative exploratory methods, as the workshops findings are not tested in a representative sample.

Further research to assess the effectiveness of the incentive mechanisms qualitatively analysed in this project is necessary, e.g., ex-ante impact assessment or multicriteria efficiency analysis, for which quantitative evidence is required.

In addition, the rapid evidence assessment is less in-depth than a systematic review and may limit the span of the literature on the aspects of this topic.

Furthermore, while the choice of key sectors and priority behaviours was justified using a combination of literature and stakeholder-based evidence, further analysis may be needed to validate some of decision steps such as the prioritisation of behaviours within the selected sectors, and the selection of sectors in relation to the weight of their contribution to net zero or circular goals. The rationale for the choice of a specific subset of sectors in this research is based on the focus on material-related behaviours, excluding those centred primarily on energy use or broader interpretations of circularity. This ensured that selected behaviours were clearly aligned with Scottish circular economy objectives related to waste prevention and reducing consumption of materials, while remaining distinct from energy-focused net zero strategies. While initially we also considered energy, we identified that from a consumer perspective there were few behaviours that could reduce or prevent material waste related to this sector and therefore energy related behaviours were excluded from the final selection of priority behaviours. Similarly, early considerations for inclusion of other sectors such as construction have not been taken forward, as construction related circular behaviours are more relevant at supply (business) level rather than household consumption level, which is the scope of this research. A replication of this research to other sectors in addition to those analysed in this study is recommended.

The presence of industry e.g., processing or retail at the stakeholder workshop, would have provided complementary views on the effectiveness and acceptability of interventions at other points of the supply chain in addition to household consumption. While this was outside the scope of this research, further studies may be needed to explore industry’s views on the interventions identified here.