LAUSR

Abstract Circular economy (CE) promotes better resource use by reducing waste and keeping products and materials in use and supports natural system regeneration. However, the social dimension of CE is virtually non-existent. Moreover, there is no holistic framework to select the social indicators to be used to assess the positive or negative impacts of CE strategies. Thus, this paper proposes an approach to identify key social indicators of CE through qualitative (Delphi) and quantitative (fuzzy logic) tools that objectively account for the uncertainty associated with data collection and judgment elicitation and number of attributes (indicators) by considering the vagueness of the data. The research includes a hybrid approach to explore multiple social indicators, a survey of social indicators for CE experts to arrive at a consensus regarding the social measures that are required and an analysis of the resulting survey data to converge on the key social indicators relevant to CE.. The results show that the most relevant social indicators for CE experts are consumer health and safety, followed by poverty, food security and governance. These findings suggest that indicators such as the eradication of poverty and hunger are priorities for CE experts. This could be attributed to the power of CE practices to help achieve several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets, particularly those that are most directly related to CE strategies.