Data Gathering and Data Characteristics

The data sources utilized in this study are summarized in Table 6. The data is divided into primary and secondary data, and the number of data of a certain type is presented.

The data is discussed more in detail in the following subchapters, according to if its pri-mary or secondary data.

Table 6. Summary of data sources utilized in the study

Data type Number of data sources

Primary data:

Focus Group Discussions with

re-searchers Focus Group Discussions 2

Observation Workshop discussions 1

Workshop presentation & notes 1

Pre-workshop orientation materials 1

Workshop commentary 1

Workshop-induced initiative 1

Secondary data:

Secondary interviews and meetings Interviews 19

Meetings 7

Practitioner Reports Research & workshop reports 11

EU Commission communication report 2

Media data Podcasts 2

As can be seen from Table 6, most of the data utilized in this study are secondary data:

7 data items are primary data, and 41 items are secondary data. Although different items are not comparable to each other e.g. in length and in the number of insights, it is nev-ertheless clear that most of the findings of this study are based on secondary data. Pri-mary and secondary data have been treated equally: even though there are relatively more targeted insights to the specific questions addressed in this study in the primary data, they have not been given special status over secondary data. All of the data utilized in the study was relatively novel: the dates the data were produced ranged from 2013 to 2020, with an emphasis on the last three years, 2018-2020. This was expected, as CE is a relatively novel concept in itself.

3.2.1 Primary data

The primary data utilized in this study consisted of two Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) and five observation data items. As a common characteristic for both types of primary data items utilized, all the data sources were Finnish experts on the field of Circular Economy, as described further in detail next in their respective subchapters.

All FGDs were conducted with the researchers contributing to the CICAT2025-research project (which this study also was a part of), and they took place on 3.6.2020 (research-ers from project Work Package 1 studying CE business catalysts) and on 8.6.2020 (re-searchers from project Work Package 2 studying CE Ecosystems and Agency). Both discussions were approximately 2 hours long.

The FGDs took place relatively early on the study, after a short initial literature review about the subject. The purpose of the FGDs was two-fold: firstly, they were going to be part of the study data set on some, at that point unknown level. Secondly, the most im-portant purpose of them was to refine the findings of the literature review to form an initial picture of how CE and finance relate to each other, what had already been discovered and what to search for during the rest of the literature review and in the data gathering later. It was also confirmed again that the subject indeed was meaningful from the point of view of CE transition and therefore required further studying.

The FGDs were semi-structured. The thematical structure of the discussions was based on the initial literature review and was also refined for the second discussion based on the first one. After the second discussion, the refined thematical structure also formed the first initial version of the final result of this study, i.e. the framework which is presented in Figure 5 in Chapter 5. Therefore, even though the primary data was not differentiated per se in the further iterations of data analysis, it had a very important role in the begin-ning of the study in creating the basis for the following research work. The discussion structures are available for review in the Appendix.

The observation data was obtained from a workshop of Finnish Government Strategic CE Initiative Theme Group which was held on 12.8.2020. The said Theme Group con-sists of top-level CE experts in Finland, with backgrounds in academia, finance, compa-nies/business, non-profit organizations, government, municipalities and other organiza-tions. The workshop itself lasted for 3 hours, during which e.g. financing CE and different CEBMs and their drivers and inhibitors were discussed.

3.2.2 Secondary data

As said before, most of the data utilized in this study are secondary data. The secondary data utilized divides into 3 categories: secondary interview/meeting transcripts and notes, practitioner reports and media data. The further classification of data and the amounts of data within these categories further classification is presented in Table 6.

Even though the different types of data were of different length, contained different amounts of insights i.e. were not similar in their characteristics, all the secondary data was treated equally and was used as a part of the research data set.

With the exception of one interview, all secondary interviews and meetings were all data that was originally collected and created for other purposes within the CICAT2025-re-search project (the larger entity which this study is a part of). All the secondary interviews were part of studies for other research papers within the project and were held during the time period 27.6.2019-22.1.2020. The key topics of the interviews are some other areas within CE research scene (e.g. textile ecosystem, strategic renewal process, Cir-cular Economy Business Models), but in each of them finance has on some level been brought up as a relevant factor during the conversation in transitioning to and/or operat-ing by CE principles. The exception was an interview conducted as a part of CEBM study on 29.6.2015 by Valtteri Ranta, in which aspects of financing CEBMs were discussed.

The secondary meeting notes were all constructed by Leena Aarikka-Stenroos (the Con-sortium leader of the CICAT2025 project) during the stakeholder group conversations which were a part of the preparation of the research project. The meetings were held during the time period 12.7.2018-7.8.2018. The stakeholders Aarikka-Stenroos dis-cussed with were representatives of many very important interest groups of society in Finland: the parties represented included e.g. European Union, Public Innovation Fund Sitra, a public organization for innovation funding Business Finland, Finnish Technology Industry umbrella organization, non-profit organizations, Finnish ministries and munici-palities. In all these discussions, the objective was to discuss what aspects of CE could and should be researched within the large research project and in each of them finance was brought up as one.

The practitioner reports utilized in this study were obtained by either snowballing using the articles of the literature review and the practitioner reports themselves or by search-ing with selected keywords from Google Scholar and Scopus search engines. They were dated in range 2014-2019. The research reports are divided broadly into two categories:

communication reports of the European Union and research and workshop reports writ-ten by e.g. legislature representative organizations, NPO organizations, commercial banks, consultancies, research facilities, academics and joint working groups of all the previous. These reports contained perhaps the most detailed insights about the subjects of the study, as many of them concentrated primarily on financing CE and different as-pects of it. However, all of them still studied financing CE on a rather general level and/or elaborated on only few smaller subjects within the thematical area of financing CE.

Therefore, both this study and further research are needed to learn more and more com-prehensively about how CE affects financing companies and vice versa.

The media data utilized in the study consisted of two podcast recordings. Both of the podcasts were obtained from the recommendations of the CICAT2025 researchers: they

were recommended due to their content regarding both sustainable finance in general and how it relates to financing CE. Towards these two subjects, both of them provided valuable insights. The podcasts were dated on 2020.