Green to gold: consumer circular choices may boost circular business models

Consumers are the true agents of transformation in the circular economy. By making conscious and sustainable choices, they drive the development of circular business models, challenging the status quo and inspiring change for a more sustainable future. The main purpose of this paper is to assess the role of consumers in the circular economy as drivers of the development of circular business models. In detail, we explore whether Portuguese citizens make circular consumption choices and what factors influence these choices. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from a sample of 826 Portuguese. The quantitative analysis was performed using the Partial Least Square (PLS) method. Overall, we found that: (i) both pro-environmental habits and environmental concerns positively influence their circular consumption choices, (ii) pro-environmental habits positively influence consumers’ greenwashing perception, and (iii) greenwashing perception highlights environmental concerns. This study demonstrates that by adopting pro-environmental habits, consumers can play a central role in transforming companies’ traditional business models into circular business models. Consequently, a model is proposed where consumers’ motivations for adopting circular behaviors are used to convert the companies’ business model from linear to circular. The model emphasizes the active participation of consumers.