Abstract

An increasing rate of urbanization, lack of knowledge, low willingness to pay for sustainable waste management, and absence of legal landfills inhibit the rate at which Circular Economy (CE) is implemented. The successful CE adoption for construction and demolition waste (CE-CDW) involves navigating a complex tapestry of interconnected factors that enable or inhibit CE-CDW success. We used a participatory system thinking and modeling approach to analyze the interaction of inhibiting factors that impact CE-CDW in Ays´en, Chile. Barriers to CE-CDW were identified in the literature and modeled in a workshop with experts from different areas of construction industry, policy, and academia. The emerging CE-CDW system model was analyzed using structural factor and network analysis techniques to identify leverage points for policy and practice. Findings pointed to limited strategic vision of policy and regulation as a key barrier impacting the necessary financial and technical elements needed to implement and scale-up CE-CDW. stratified and non-probabilistic, following the exploratory research design, considering all districts of the city. We determined 8 dimensions upon factorial analysis: (1) safety, (2) service quality, (3) bus stops' infrastructure, (4) accessibility, (5) information, (6) drivers' behavior, (7) improvement in buses and (8) harassment. Together, these dimensions explained 58 % of the data variability. Although service quality and accessibility are the issues commonly highlighted in evaluations of the public transit bus service in Chile, this study shows that security is the dimension worst evaluated and presents a greater disadvantage. >50 % of riders had been unable to use public transit buses at least once, mainly due to safety concerns among women, young people, and the elderly. One relevant observation is the need to deepen transportation disadvantage research from a gender perspective.