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

8. Appendix 1

Table 7: Circular Economy Consumer Behaviour Conceptual Frameworks

Author: (Reike et al., 2018)

Name: 10-R Framework

Key Concepts: Priority level based on loop length (shorter better)

Household influence – actions that can be performed independently or require businesses / supporting systems to be in place

Author: (Vidal-Ayuso et al., 2023)

Name: Consumer decision making

Key Concepts: Individual / Collaborative

Low consumer involvement / High consumer involvement

Author: (Lindahl, 2018)

Name: Solution approaches

Key Concepts: Prolonging life (slowing down) vs circulating (looping)

Author: (Jourdain and Lamah, 2024)

Name: Circular conceptual framework

Key Concepts: Circular fostering vs slackening (slowing)

Upstream vs downstream

Author: (Shevchenko et al., 2023)

Name: Consumers as customers, users and end of life product holders

Key Concepts: Type of CE loop

Period of waste prevention

Type of circular strategy

Singular or combination of strategies

Contribution to circularity potential

Type of circularity

Author: (Macklin and Kaufman, 2024)

Name: User Behaviours in a Materials Circular Economy

Key Concepts: Phase, Function, Purpose, Action (Behaviour), Dependencies

Author: (Colley et al., 2024)

Name: Circular Behaviours Survey

Key Concepts: Dimensions, R-terms, Stage of consumption

Criteria applied to the circular behaviour inventory to prioritise circular economy behaviours

Sector alignment

Following discussions with SG and Zero Waste Scotland, three potential sectors were highlighted for greater focus (textiles, food and transport), to align with wider policy development. The four sectors were used to populate the behavioural framework proposed by Macklin and Kaufmann (2024) with relevant examples of circular behaviours. Clearly defining behaviours is essential for designing effective behaviour change interventions. This involves specifying the action, its target, the context, and the time frame, which improves both clarity and measurability. This approach is consistent with the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen 1991) and other behavioural models. Linking behaviours to specific sectors and products provides a tangible context and target for otherwise abstract actions such as ‘reuse’.

Policy alignment

Scotland’s Environment Strategy (Scottish Government, 2020b) sets out an ambition to use and re-use resources wisely and end the throw-away culture therefore reducing demand for new materials and waste creation. This outcome is supported by the Circular Economy and Waste Route Map, which aims to implement a focused and targeted progress towards a circular economy, including prioritising reuse, and promoting repair to extend the life of goods. Reducing food waste is addressed as a distinct priority action within the Circular Economy Route Map (Scottish Government, 2024). This suggests that in moving from the broad inventory to selected behaviours which minimise the amount of new material entering the economy should be prioritised as well as behaviours that keep material circulating, thus reducing both demand for new materials and waste.

The Environment Strategy also sets out an ambition for ensuring Scotland plays its full role in the global effort to tackle the climate emergency. This outcome is supported by the Climate Change Plan where establishing a circular economy in Scotland contributes to reduce emissions in the waste and resources sector. Since emissions from waste are primarily driven by material consumption and disposal, behaviours that reduce physical waste offer the most direct emissions savings for this sector. This implies that moving from the broad inventory to a selected group of behaviours that contribute to a reduction in physical waste should be prioritised over those that might be considered circular since they promote the recirculation of energy. This will therefore reduce the emissions associated with waste in the carbon accounts. There is, however, a balance to be struck between reducing emissions associated with waste and reducing emissions overall which is discussed further linked to environmental impact criterion.

To further avoid duplication with the Net Zero policy area, we cross-referenced the broad inventory of behaviours with the Net Zero Public Engagement Strategy (Scottish Government, 2021) corresponding website which recommends behaviours consumers can engage in to reduce their emissions. There was significant overlap in the behaviours identified for example ‘Sharing clothes with friends or buying second-hand items instead of new’ was listed as one of the behaviours promoted under Net Zero. Reduce, reuse, repair are promoted on the Net Zero website, however the reduce category is not framed in circular economy terms, whereas the reuse and repair are. This suggests that for consistency with the policy emphasis priority circular economy behaviours should focus on reuse and repair rather than reduction or avoidance to ensure the recommendations made to the public are distinct.

Behavioural feasibility

Individuals are generally more inclined to adopt new behaviours, known as approach behaviours, than to discontinue existing ones, referred to as avoidance behaviours. This tendency is partly explained by the concept of loss aversion (Kahneman and Tversky, 1979), whereby individuals are more sensitive to perceived losses than to equivalent gains. For instance, a suggestion to purchase fewer clothes may be experienced as a loss, whereas a suggestion to wear existing garments for longer is less likely to be perceived in the same way, despite potentially resulting in similar outcomes in terms of reduced consumption.

Approach behaviours may also be more effective when addressing habitual behaviours. Habits are underpinned by cognitive associations between specific cues and behavioural responses. For example, a mid-morning feeling of hunger might trigger the habitual purchase of a packaged snack (Gardner, 2015). Attempting to simply resist the behaviour when the cue arises can be effortful and is often insufficient to disrupt the underlying association. In contrast, replacing the habitual response with an alternative behaviour, such as consuming an unpackaged piece of fruit, can support the formation of new cue-behaviour associations that gradually supplant the original habit.

This implies that, in moving from the broad inventory to selected behaviours, we should prioritise behaviours from the optimise use category in the Macklin and Kaufmann (2024) framework over avoid need for item and specifically behaviours that suggest going without items. Priority behaviours should not promote avoidance but instead promote replacement behaviours e.g. instead of avoid buying new clothes promote wearing clothes you already have.

Consumer Scotland conducted recent research into the drivers behind current consumer purchasing behaviours. They highlighted that for textiles; purchases were often driven by interest in acquiring new items. While electronic and home appliances were most often driven by a need to replace a broken item. This knowledge can be combined with the sufficiency approach to understand the main reasons for new purchases with different and more effective ways of replacing them with more circular behaviours. For textiles, this may involve replacing the purchase of new clothing with borrowing items to achieve a sense of novelty. In contrast, for electronic products, the behaviour of buying new appliances may be more effectively substituted by repairing existing ones, at least from a behavioural standpoint.

Environmental impact

Assessing system-wide effects

Increased uptake of circular economy principles does not guarantee a sustainable level of consumption; a more circular economy may still overshoot our planetary boundaries (Tunn et al., 2019). Tunn et al. (2019) argue that circularity and sustainable consumption are not inherently aligned. Their empirical study of models for sustainable consumption found that many circular practices focus on material cycling or extended use but do not necessarily reduce overall consumption. The most promising models, according to their findings, are those that explicitly aim to reduce the volume of consumption while also minimising consumer effort.

This finding is consistent with growing body of ecological economics literature advances what is now widely referred to as the sufficiency principle. This principle holds that sustainability cannot be achieved without absolute reductions in material and energy use, particularly in high-income economies. At its core is the idea of ‘enoughness’, which challenges dominant paradigms of continuous economic growth and efficiency-driven solutions. Wiedmann et al. (2020) for example argue that technological improvements and increased efficiency have consistently been outpaced by rising levels of affluence and consumption, leading them to conclude that reductions in per capita material use are essential for remaining within planetary boundaries. In a similar vein, Velenturf and Purnell (2021) caution that circular economy strategies, if pursued without a clear foundation in sufficiency, may inadvertently reinforce unsustainable systems. They argue for a systemic reorientation of the circular economy towards environmental restoration, social equity and reduced material throughput. Sufficiency, in this context, is not simply a matter of efficiency or substitution. Rather, it is a normative and strategic principle that demands a reduction in the total scale of production and consumption to avoid transgressing ecological limits.

Considering these insights, the circular economy should be viewed as a method rather than an outcome. It offers a toolkit of strategies such as reuse, repair, remanufacturing and recycling but whether these contribute to sustainability depends on how they are implemented and whether they support the goal of sufficiency. Crucially, this contribution cannot be assumed and needs to be tested empirically.

The method applied in the Scottish Circularity Gap Report (Circle Economy, 2022) offers one way to assess this at a system level. Using economy-wide material flow analysis, the report models interventions that can achieve absolute reductions in material use while accounting for system-wide effects such as rebound and displacement. From a broader set of recommended changes in the report, three consumer behaviours were identified as relevant to this study: (1) avoiding red meat or adopting a vegetarian diet, (2) engaging in car-sharing, and (3) reusing and repairing textiles. These behaviours were selected for their alignment with priority sectors, avoidance of policy overlap, their contribution to reducing material demand and waste emissions, and their potential to displace higher-impact forms of consumption.

Assessing behavioural trade-offs

While sufficiency at the system level focuses on reducing absolute material throughput across the economy, applying this principle at the behavioural level requires a more granular understanding of which consumer actions lead to meaningful reductions in environmental impact. In this context, sufficiency can be defined as the adoption of behaviours that avoid, reduce or displace resource-intensive consumption, rather than merely substituting one form of consumption for another. Sufficiency-oriented behaviours are those that result in net environmental benefits, not simply those that appear circular or efficient in technical terms.

As Macklin and Kaufman (2024) emphasise, the sufficiency effect of a behaviour depends on its real-world consequences. For example, donating used clothing or purchasing second-hand items may appear circular, but if such actions enable or justify increased consumption elsewhere, they may fail to reduce total material use. Similarly, sharing or renting products may reduce per-user impact only if they displace additional purchases or production. This highlights the need to go beyond the form of a behaviour and assess its actual outcome.

To support this, Macklin and Kaufman (2024) propose a behavioural hierarchy based on Maitre-Ekern and Dalhammer (2019) that groups consumer actions by their function in the circular economy. The hierarchy reflects the general principle that behaviours which prevent or avoid consumption, such as delaying or refusing acquisition, tend to offer greater environmental benefit than those that manage materials later in the product lifecycle, such as reuse, recycling or disposal. However, the authors also caution that the effectiveness of any behaviour is context-dependent and cannot be assumed. Sufficiency at the behavioural level requires empirical validation, particularly through approaches that can assess whether a given behaviour displaces more resource-intensive alternatives and reduces overall the environmental burden.

Table 8: Search string

Target - Population

String - consum* OR citizen OR domestic OR "end-user" OR household* OR individual OR public OR resid* OR lifestyle OR behaviour OR pattern OR practice

Target - Behaviour

String - avoid* OR borrow* OR car* OR circular* OR clean OR convert* OR efficiency OR efficient OR leas* OR lend* OR lifespan OR longevity OR maintain* OR prolong* OR reclaim* OR recondition* OR reduc* OR refurbish* OR refus* OR remanufactur* OR rent* OR repair* OR "self repair" OR repurpos* OR resell* OR responsible AND retain* OR reus* OR rewar* OR reworn OR shar* OR "car sharing" OR slacken OR sustainable OR upcycl* )

Target: Sector

String: food OR "food waste" OR "meat" OR diet OR cloth* OR textile* OR apparel OR fashion OR garment* OR energy OR heat* OR solar OR "heat pump" OR "electric* appliance*" OR "mobile phone" OR transport OR car OR travel

Target: Impact

String: carbon OR "energy consumption" OR "material security" OR "resource security" OR "fair work" OR "just transition" OR climate OR conservation OR emission* OR environment OR equality OR footprint OR ghg OR "greenhouse gas" OR health OR impact OR inequalit* OR lifecycle OR "life cycle assessment" OR pollution OR poverty OR rebound OR resilien* OR social OR sustainability OR sustainable OR unsustainable OR wellbeing OR "air quality" OR decarbonization OR "ecological footprint*" OR "material flow"