Circular Business Models for Construction Companies: A Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This paper is a systematic review around the circular business model of the construction industry, and the selected topic has theoretical and practical value and clear structure. However, some parts need to be further improved.

1. The introduction part lacks the specific performance of ‘lack of systemic perspective’ in the current literature, and it is suggested to add in order to enhance the relevance of the research.
2. Whether the appendix table can be considered to be briefly explained in the main text, or provide key examples, so that readers can avoid the dispersion of information and reduce the readability. At the same time, some of the categorisations need to be further clarified to reflect their rationality.
3. As a review article, the manuscript should be further strengthened by the number of references.
4. Whether more than one coder was used in the coding process, and if so the method of testing the reliability of the coding process (e.g. multi-researcher cross-validation) should be supplemented to enhance the credibility of the analyses.  

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers

Firstly, thank you very much for reviewing my manuscript and providing us valuable and insightful comments. To ease your work of checking our revision, we answered each comment accordingly. You could find the detailed information below and the corresponding answers are highlighted with track changes in the re-submitted manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment/suggestion and have ensured that the changes made are carried out throughout the manuscript. We believe that the end result is a substantially improved version and hope that you and the reviewers will agree with this assessment. We look forward to your feedback on the revised version.

 

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Comments1: Lines 30-32, The "take-make-dispose" linear model is mentioned, but its specific manifestations in construction (e.g., high waste rates) are not detailed. To strengthen the argument, add industry-specific data, e.g., "Construction generates over 30% of global waste (cite)."

Comments2: Lines 38-40, Guerra & Leite's CE definition is presented in isolation without comparison to other established frameworks. For better scholarly rigor, contrast this with definitions from key organizations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation to demonstrate the definition's alignment or divergence.

Comments3: Lines 45-47, While noting a "lack of systematic view" in current research, the text doesn't specify whether this refers to methodological approaches or thematic coverage. Clarify by stating, "Existing studies disproportionately focus on technological solutions while neglecting business model innovation aspects like value capture mechanisms."

Comments4: Lines 70-72, The policy-market coordination gap is identified but lacks analysis of underlying causes. Enhance this by adding, "This misalignment stems from conflicting short-term economic incentives for private developers versus long-term sustainability goals in public policy (cite)."

Comments5: Lines 110-112, The selection of 53 articles requires clearer justification regarding representativeness. Specify that "The final corpus intentionally included studies from both leading (EU) and emerging (SE Asia) markets to capture regional variations in CBM adoption."

Comments6: Lines 199-206, The BMC framework's adoption needs stronger theoretical justification. Insert: "BMC was prioritized over alternatives like PESTEL because its visual template explicitly maps how circular value propositions (e.g., material recovery) directly enable revenue streams (e.g., resale markets) - a critical linkage for construction firms."

Comments7: Lines 310-312, Claims about "economic benefits" remain unquantified, weakening practical implications. Strengthen with: "Case studies show steel reuse reduces material costs by 18-22% (cite), while modular designs cut construction waste disposal expenses by up to 35% (cite)."

Comments8: Lines 453-456, Transport cost discussions miss optimization strategies. Add actionable insight: "Adopting urban mining strategies where 80% of materials are sourced within 50km can lower transport emissions by 40% (cite), making this a key CBM cost lever."

Comments9: Lines 476-478, Future research directions should address technological enablers. Propose: "Further studies should examine how blockchain-based material passports could solve traceability challenges identified in our channel analysis (Section 3.4)."

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers

Firstly, thank you very much for reviewing my manuscript and providing us valuable and insightful comments. To ease your work of checking our revision, we answered each comment accordingly. You could find the detailed information below and the corresponding answers are highlighted with track changes in the re-submitted manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment/suggestion and have ensured that the changes made are carried out throughout the manuscript. We believe that the end result is a substantially improved version and hope that you and the reviewers will agree with this assessment. We look forward to your feedback on the revised version.

 

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Authors,

Please adjust these Major comments.

1. Abstract: Please rewrite the abstract to include the objectives, methodology, main results, policy implications and conclusion.
2. " The article is organized as follow: Chapter two describes the process and analytical methods used for this systematic review; Chapter three presents the content and results from the analysis; Chapter four discusses the results derived from the content analysis and explores future research directions; and the final chapter concludes the article. " , please replace chapter by another word, this is a research paper not a thesis.
3.   Literature review:  I think you merged it with introduction but this is not enough.  Make it as a separate section with a summary of previous work and showing your contribution at the end. 
4. "Scopus was chosen as the data- base for literature search". Scopus is not enough, you should select another platforms like web of science. This will give you more results for analysis. 
5.  Put sources for all figures and tables 
6.  Add policy implications section after conclusion 
7. Proofreading the whole article

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Can be improved. 

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers

Firstly, thank you very much for reviewing my manuscript and providing us valuable and insightful comments. To ease your work of checking our revision, we answered each comment accordingly. You could find the detailed information below and the corresponding answers are highlighted with track changes in the re-submitted manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment/suggestion and have ensured that the changes made are carried out throughout the manuscript. We believe that the end result is a substantially improved version and hope that you and the reviewers will agree with this assessment. We look forward to your feedback on the revised version.

 

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors attempt to conduct a systematic literature review of circular business models for construction companies. The topic of the article seems relevant and of interest, however, the substance of the article offer little value for the literature. A few major comments for the authors to consider:

1) I'd like the methods section to reflect a bit on the limitations of the literature review method deployed. For example, only using Scopus compared to other database, only reviewing English language articles, etc.

2) The results section of the literature review felt shallow. It's unclear what the main areas of study have been in the literature and how they link to specific  studies.  It would be interesting to know what themes were most common (quantitatively) and how each theme has been researched in the literature. This would offer a much more valuable literature review on the topic than simply listing the main and sub-themes with simplistic definitions. (also, the content analysis heading should be re-titled to make it more clear that this section is unpacking the results of the study, rather than describing the method of content analysis.)

3) Some sections in the results seem to overlap. For example, the adoption of external ctrieria (LEED, e.g.) was described in a few themes. 

Author Response

Dear editor and reviewers

Firstly, thank you very much for reviewing my manuscript and providing us valuable and insightful comments. To ease your work of checking our revision, we answered each comment accordingly. You could find the detailed information below and the corresponding answers are highlighted with track changes in the re-submitted manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment/suggestion and have ensured that the changes made are carried out throughout the manuscript. We believe that the end result is a substantially improved version and hope that you and the reviewers will agree with this assessment. We look forward to your feedback on the revised version.

 

Respectfully,

The authors

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

No

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Authors addressed my comments. Best Regards.

Reviewer 4 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The author's responded to the minor comments I made. However, the substantive comment about the results section was addressed by changing the title of the results section, which was clearly an inadequate response.