Barriers to access-based consumption (ABC) have been extensively studied in different strands of literature. However, cumulative knowledge is not organized to date, and a comprehensive overview of barriers identified by empirical studies in diverse strands is lacking. Such a picture is essential for laying the ground for further change-oriented research and actual changes in practice. This article reports on the results of a systematic review on barriers to transitioning from ownership- to access-based consumption. The review focuses on the literature strands product-service systems, circular economy, sharing economy, and collaborative consumption. Through open and axial coding of 289 barriers reported in 45 empirical studies, we found 17 themes of barriers concerning consumers, business, and society. The analysis of the barriers reveals four significant insights important for the research and practitioner community:

1. the overall experience of ABC and trust mechanisms need to be better understood;
2. organizational aspects in traditional business need a system change;
3. regulation plays a fundamental role in making ABC work for business, society, and sustainability; and
4. sharing risks and experimentation for new learnings are necessary.

These four major insights suggest that consumers need business and government to offer enabling conditions for ABC – spanning from raising awareness and understanding to improving user experience. Furthermore, businesses need governments to create the necessary structures to support ABC offerings – from decreasing risks to increasing incentives. How and which mechanisms can further facilitate circular behaviors is a salient topic for future investigations.

This paper describes a socio-technical experiment relating to a sustainable innovation project conducted in a protected niche or "living lab" and evaluates the ability of the experiment to generate learning and strategic direction. The study focused on a Product Service System (PSS) for renting infant mobility products to consumers. A PSS is a resource efficient system of products and services supported by networks and infrastructure. In the experiment, refurbished products were rented to 1044 families, with some products being reutilized three times. Learnings were generated through five stages: combining competences and resources, steering and facilitating change, engaging users at early stages, offering users opportunities to modify practices through trial and capturing and mediating mutual learning through knowledge co-creation. The observed environmental benefits included reduction of particulate plastic matter released into the environment and transportation of materials. Considerable barriers to the implementation of the PSS in the open market were identified, including attrition through loss or damage, product liability and consumer distrust in sharing products due to fear of contagion.

The purpose of this study is to synthesize the widely used theories about co-creation from two main perspectives: co-creation as an innovation process and co-creation as a design process applied to the service concept design in the built environment context. The architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry do not have much application of end-user-oriented service design in general, especially with intensive co-creation processes. To facilitate such a process, we are using a living lab environment as a laboratorial model of the real built environment, but with the opportunity to have access to the end-users and different types of stakeholders. Using the KTH Live-in-Lab explorative case study, we were able to discuss the concept of co-creation by distinguishing between co-creation as innovation and co-creation as a design process, facilitating the process of co-creation of service concepts for the proposed built environment including methods from both perspectives: innovation and design, and evaluating the process of service concepts co-creation for the built environment from the point of innovation, knowledge transfer, sustainability, and user experience.

Reusing material products via peer-to-peer (P2P) sharing is one of the circular economy (CE) strategies to fulfil consumer needs with minimised environmental impact and material consumption. However, adopting sharing practices challenges both societal normative behaviours as well as existing business models businesses. Previous studies grounded on stated answers about values, intentions and attitudes of users found several factors that impede the practice of sharing, even though users' needs were said to be satisfied. Nevertheless, few studies have looked at dilemmas that users face while engaging in sharing practices and how these inhibit their participation in CE solutions. This study addresses these discrepancies empirically in the context of P2P product sharing. Using a trust-ownership-need model, we investigated users' reviews (n=415) from an online P2P product sharing platform operating in Sweden and Norway. The data analysis method is a qualitative content analysis of the users' comments (from lessors or lessees). The results reveal the dilemmas that the platform users experience, i.e., information transparency, product pick-up and return arrangements, product quality, security, and user knowledge to operate the product. We argue that missing social presence in the virtual environment, low competence in sharing practice from lessees, and lax platform governance are contributing factors underlying the dilemmas. The research concludes with strategies for promoting user participation in sharing practice and optimising platforms to pursue CE's environmental promises.

Reducing private car commuting is necessary for decarbonisation of cities; meanwhile, new shared mobility services provide an alternative to cars for daily commuting proposing a transition of user behaviour towards more sustainable mobility practices. In this paper, we investigate changes in everyday life practices when private car commuting is replaced with a shared mobility alternative, integrating lightweight small size electric vehicles (LEVs) in a peer-to-peer shared mobility service. Through a living lab experiment, a long-term empirical study with 16 individual households in Sweden was conducted employing a mixed methods approach. Using social practice theory as an analytical lens, we interrogate in depth the process of change in users’ everyday lives to understand challenges in integrating shared mobility services into everyday practice, and the implications for transition towards sustainable mobility practices from a user's everyday life point of view. The results show that a new mobility service can play a role in reconfiguring the meaning of private car commuting in terms of its related impacts, as well as increase knowledge and trust in sustainable alternatives. However, integrating shared mobility services in everyday practices showed that it became difficult to manage after six months, particularly for users with children. Our study demonstrates that current everyday life logistics, time affluence, and effort requirements are critical variables for enabling practice changes towards more sustainable mobility alternatives, such as a light electric vehicle sharing service. To enable people to reduce private car use, a more integrated and systemic design approach is needed for alternatives to become competitive with the notion of cars in everyday mobility.

The linear paradigm of take-make-dispose in production and consumption patterns impedes the achievement of global sustainability goals. Strategies for maintaining the added value of resources and circulating them have been discussed as promising for the future. There are, however, many barriers to be addressed to overcome the linear lock-in. The large body of literature on these barriers is notably diverse in terms of theory, methods, sectors, products, and settings. This demonstrates the complexity of delineating implications to the practice and research needs. Without a common framework to analyse barriers, knowledge does not accumulate, hindering the development and implementation of solutions and policies that could effectively address the barriers. In this article, we developed a systematic map of studies on barriers related to the circular transition. The purpose was twofold: (1) to classify published research on barriers; (2) to provide a searchable database for future more rigorous systematic literature reviews. We reviewed the abstract of 527 publications and classified the study according to a developed scheme. This classification scheme includes the research paradigms (circular economy, sharing economy, collaborative consumption and product-service systems), circular strategy (recycling, remanufacturing, component/product reuse, and access-based consumption), country, sector/industry/product, and research approach and method. The resulting research map is open source, serving also as an adaptive digital database for researchers alike to perform systematic reviews and contribute further to its collaborative development

The linear paradigm of take-make-dispose in production and consumption threatens global sustainability goals. Strategies for looping resources (e.g. as proposed in circular economy) have been discussed as a promising future, but not without a number of challenges or barriers in the transition phase. Consequently, barriers for realizing such strategies is a prominent topic in an increasing number of empirical studies. Following this trend, several of meta studies have compiled the barriers found in the literature, trying to summarize and generalize them; while others have cited or assumed the existence of a specific barrier and proposed a solution to overcome it. However, understanding of what type of barrier related to what type of circular strategy (e.g. reuse, remanufacture, recycle) is limited because scholars of emerging scientific areas use different concepts and language to frame their findings. Moreover, the fact that contextual factors may play an important role concerning the presence or absence of a specific barrier has been overlooked. Without a common framework to organize the findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate. In this study, we developed a systematic map for classifying studies on barriers related to the emerging fields of circular economy, sharing economy, collaborative consumption and product-service systems. The purpose is to, first, classify and consolidate research knowledge in order to analyze the progress in these four research paradigms, and second, to provide a searchable database for future more rigorous systematic literature reviews. Five hundred and twenty-seven publications published between 2003 and January 2019 available in Scopus were reviewed and classified in a fine level of granularity, including whether barriers are the focus of the publication, how the barriers were identified by the publication (e.g. empirically, assumed, indirectly mentioned), whether the publication discuss or test a solution, the method used (e.g. case study, survey, interviews) and data source (primary, secondary). The systematic map helped to identify relevant contextual factors for one or a set of barriers in single empirical study, such as the circular strategy, geographical context, (i.e. country), level of analysis (e.g. business model, governance, product, user), and sector (e.g. accommodation, clothing, transport, electronics). Further, the map is an open source adaptive framework serving also as a digital database for researchers alike for extracting knowledge and contributing further to its development, through input and collaboration.

The current linear system of extract-produce-consume-dispose poses considerable challenges for achieving sustainability goals and will eventually lead to the depletion of non-renewable natural resources. Circular Economy (CE) is promoted as a possible sustainable way forward. The suggested transition questions society at large and the business-as-usual of existing firms in particular.

Barriers to CE implementation have become a growing stream of literature across several sectors and relating to different levels of society. However, this emerging stream of research and how it handles issues of management appears not to be helpful to managers and organizations. This study is, therefore, a systematic review of the current state-of art of circular economy barriers where we scrutinize issues related to management. Attention is brought to matters concerning innovation in management, in particular, business model innovation and innovation ecosystems. 

Our findings suggest that these topics are indeed indicated as important in the CE literature, yet in very diverse ways depending on the studied case. Implications for future studies within CE are drawn, with suggested point of departure in innovation management topics.

Low-carbon mobility alternatives, such as shared services integrating light electric vehicles, support transitions to sustainable transport systems. However, new products and services are not enough, as changes must also incorporate the practices of travelling, infrastructure, and mobility cultures in which users of mobility solutions are core stakeholders. This paper argues that userinvolvement is necessary in sustainable innovation processes but that the expected diversity of user roles and their involvement can also lead to contrasting outcomes for sustainable innovation transitions. Guided by theory in user involvement, this study investigated users and nonusers of light electric vehicles in a sharing mobility service system set up as living lab in two large workplaces in Sweden. Fifty-one interviews with employees at the workplaces were conducted during the implementation process and analysed combined with a questionnaire and data from system tracking through sensor technology. The paper finds that both users and non-users are co-creators in building momentum for sustainable mobility alternatives and provides a spectrum of user roles with defined characteristics. Four roles are distinguished within this spectrum: vigilant users, passive collaborators, active decision makers and ambassadors. We suggest that a convergent activation strategy is deployed for involving a full spectrum of users in order to capture their insights in ways that positively affect transition. Such a strategy addresses users and non-users as part of decision-making concerning alternatives and cultivates a culture of user collaboration, while also enabling a plurality of contributions in order to challenge existing regimes and established practices among individuals

In this paper, a set of indicators is presented that aim to identify promising service innovations for Accessibility as a Service (AaaS) and Mobility as a Service (MaaS); services that potentially can reduce the demand for transport and optimize use of transport infrastructure and vehicles in urban regions. The proposed indicators characterize service innovations from three different perspectives: 1) Is the service innovation environmentally sustainable? Does it reduce negative impacts on the environment (reduce carbon emissions, use of space), 2) Is it rewardable? Is value created for an organization? Does it make use of new sustainable business models, and 3) How widely is the service spread? How many users are there, what is the geographic distribution and what level of societal transition has occurred? The developed indicators are meant to guide policy makers, decision makers, business developers and academia in the prioritizations that need to be made when allocating land and resources to the most promising and powerful innovations, moving towards more environmentally friendly mobility and accessibility. The next step will be to test the indicators to identify and categorize existing and emerging new services, ideas, pilots and prototypes. The results of this second step will be presented in our next article.