Abstract

The circular economy has become a framework for improving resource efficiency, reducing waste, and supporting climate change mitigation. Yet, its adoption in transition economies such as Serbia remains limited by structural and financial constraints. This study applies the Analytical Hierarchy Process to evaluate perspectives from private-sector companies and circular-economy experts on the key barriers to circular economy implementation. Result values represent the normalised weights (priority vectors) where a value closer to 1.0 indicates a higher level of importance or impact of a specific factor within the model. The results reveal a discrepancy between stakeholder groups: while companies emphasised social barriers, including weak consumer culture and resistance to change, experts identified financial (0.338) and institutional barriers (0.272) as the most influential. At the sub-factor level, changes in accordance with European directives (0.062) emerged as the most significant social barrier, followed by understanding the concept of the circular economy (0.050) and education regarding the circular economy (0.042). Results provide evidence-based insights into the dominant challenges limiting circular economy adoption in Serbia and the relevance of multi-criteria decision-making for prioritising circular economy barriers in transition economies.