Prioritizing Barriers to Construction Waste Minimization and Circular Economy Adoption in India Using the Best-Worst Method

Circuit Economy (CE) conversion is necessary to sustainable construction in India yet the implementation is pushed by strong forces. The paper will systematically discover, pinpoint, and prioritize these challenges to provide a strategic roadmap to the policy makers and industry players. This study employed a sequential mixed-method design, firstly, generated a highly detailed list of 27 barriers through a broad literature review, and such list was confirmed and put into perspective by 12 domain experts. The obstacles were divided into six dimensions. Subsequently, the information of 67 professionals was examined with the assistance of the powerful Best-Worst Method (BWM) as the Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) tool to prioritize these problems. As it is demonstrated in the analysis, the most problematic barrier is the so-called Regulatory and Policy Barriers (RPB) such as incoherent legislation, the lack of enforcement, and the lack of incentives, and Industry and Supply Chain Barriers (ISC) seem to be the least important. This finding indicates the enabling quality of the governing structure that is to say that a facilitative policy framework is the essential prerequisite to success in the dismantling of the technical, economic and behavioural barriers. The study concludes that the major improvement in minimisation of the construction waste and the implementation of CE in India lies in the establishment of a regulatory environment that would not only allow but also make mandatory, which would open the opportunity of a more sustainable and resilient construction industry.