Circular Economy: a systematic review of the literature and bibliometric analysis

Abstract

The circular economy has acquired centrality in the academic debate as a management model that seeks to integrate economic activity and environmental well-being, insofar as it configures a reverse and closed cycle process that makes it possible to reduce the generation of waste, by transforming it them into new production instruments and consequently reduce the consumption of natural resources used to manufacture new products. This article aims to analyze the scientific production in circular economy, focusing on economic/financial aspects and their applications in agribusiness, considering the period from 2010 to 2020. To this end, a comprehensive bibliometric analysis was performed on a sample of 281 articles, through the bibliometrix R software, in the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The results obtained indicated that until 2014 publications on the subject were still incipient. However, as of 2015, the number of articles published grows exponentially, demonstrating the relevance of the circular economy both for business sustainability and for the academic area. This work is of special importance for researchers and companies, who wish to obtain a holistic view of the circular economy and its implications for agribusiness, in terms of main indicators, principles and applications, in the scientific literature.