Abstract
This study develops an empirical-to-causal framework for examining barriers to circular economy (CE) implementation in Indian automobile manufacturing. A 306-response industry survey was first used to establish contextual evidence of CE awareness, practices, training, organizational arrangements and perceived material/design issues. Based on this evidence and prior CE barrier literature, twelve manufacturing-focused barriers were established. A separate expert elicitation stage was then conducted with two experienced automobile-sector professionals. Each expert evaluated 132 directional relationships among the twelve barriers using five linguistic influence levels: No Influence, Very Low, Low, High and Very High. The linguistic assessments were represented using trapezoidal fuzzy numbers and analyzed using Fuzzy DEMATEL. The study isolates clearly the barriers acting as causal drivers and the barriers which acts as net effect, which is a significant outcome and can act as guidance for management to define directions for CE adoption in manufacturing. The results also demonstrate that barrier prominence and causal role are not equivalent.