Serdar Türkeli

Circular Economy Policies in China and Europe

The idea of a circular economy (CE) has become prominent in both European and Chinese policy making. Chinese and European perspectives on a CE share a common conceptual basis and exhibit many similar concerns in seeking to enhance resource efficiency. Yet they also differ, and this article explores differences in the focus of CE policy in China and Europe. We present evidence on the differing understandings of the CE concept in Chinese and European policy discourse, drawing on qualitative and quantitative analysis of policy documents, media articles, and academic publications. We show that the Chinese perspective on the CE is broad, incorporating pollution and other issues alongside waste and resource concerns, and it is framed as a response to the environmental challenges created by rapid growth and industrialization. In contrast, Europes conception of the CE has a narrower environmental scope, focusing more narrowly on waste and resources and opportunities for business. We then examine similarities and differences in the focus of policy activity in the two regions and in the indicators used to measure progress. We show differences in the treatment of issues of scale and place and different priorities across value chains (from design to manufacture, consumption, and waste management). We suggest some reasons for the divergent policy articulation of the CE concept and suggest lessons that each region can learn from the other.

Changing Patterns in Eco-Innovation Research: A Bibliometric Analysis

In this chapter we analyze patterns in the nature of eco-innovation research. For this, we conducted different types of bibliometric analyses on Web of Science Core Collection data. The analysis reveals that eco-innovation is examined from different perspectives. These are (1) supply-side perspectives focusing on firms and industries (e.g. drivers for and barriers to eco-innovation); (2) technology-centered research (e.g. carbon capture and storage, electric vehicles, smart plugs); (3) science-based research (e.g. new materials); (4) sectoral studies (e.g. steel and iron industry, transport, information technology, food, agriculture, tourism); (5) the knowledge support element in eco-innovation (e.g. skills and training); (6) demand-side analyses (e.g. diffusion and adoption dynamics of individuals, households, firms), and (7) a policy influence perspective (the impact of policy instruments e.g. eco-labels, policy mixes). Concept-wise, we observe that the concepts of industrial ecology, industrial symbiosis, and circular economy are gaining importance as analytical lenses. Our analysis reveals differences between “eco-innovation” and “environmental innovation” research in that the latter pays more attention to policy influences and is less consumption-oriented. We also identified a shift from analysing the impact towards supply and demand side research, a shift from environmental innovations to the generative processes and dilemmas for sustainability-oriented innovations, and a rise in publications from less developed parts of the world.

Governance of innovation policy : empirical studies on applied political economy by multi-method analysis

Effective research and innovation (R&I) policy depends on the extent to which ideas, interests and institutional mechanisms for policy making work together rather than work against each other. In a political governance model for effective R&I policy in the EU-28, the separate influence of inter-ministerial coordination, regulatory impact assessment extended to sustainability checks, parliamentary committee surveillance, media attention and societal consultation is investigated. Interaction effects are investigated in a set-theoretic analysis for the econometrically best-fit model. Our results show that the societal consultation, policy-informed opposition and sector-informed informal policy coordination are necessary but not sufficient to bring about effectiveness to R&I policy. Their influence on effectiveness of R&I policy depends on the combination with either media attention or regulatory impact assessment (RIA) extended to sustainability checks. We reached these results with the help of ordered logit estimations and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses using 2011-2013 (SGI) data of Bertelsmann Stiftung and Lexis Nexis Academic.