Geographical and organised proximities influencing circular economy practices: the closer partners, the better?

Research argues that the proximity between firms represents an important determinant of their adoption of circular economy practices. However, several shortcomings remain: (1) extant studies do not explicitly examine the role of proximity between firms, but rather study the importance of inter-organisational cooperation; (2) some exclusively investigate geographical proximity, but focus on specific context through case studies, leading to a lack of generalisable and robust evidence; and (3) the role of organised proximity remains largely unexplored. In this paper, we address those issues by relying on data from an original survey of 1000 firms in the chemistry sector in France.