In this paper, published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Silvia Blasi (UNIMI), Benedetta Crisafulli (Birkbeck, University of London), and Silvia Rita Sedita (Department of Economics and Management University of Padova) investigate the communication intensity of companies adopting circular economy (CE) practices, here with the aim of assessing the extent to which promoting circularity increases their economic performance (measured as return on assets—ROA), disentangling this effect for the different quantiles of the ROA distribution. Employing a unique web-scraped dataset of companies’ websites, they capture and analyze the online promotional efforts of a sample of Italian manufacturing companies engaged in CE practices. Results show that small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that fall into the lower- medium–performing range might benefit from intensively signaling their circularity on their website. Promoting the circularity of business practices and product offerings is a pivotal process in increasing the value of circular products.

Read the full article here