2026-06-03T08:21:06Zhttps://riuma.uma.es/rest/oai/request

oai:riuma.uma.es:10630/411262026-02-03T11:21:08Zcom_10630_2254col_10630_37953

Business associations, access to finance, and institutional quality: Drivers of SMEs’ circular economy transformation Sánchez-Teba, Eva María González-Fernández, Ana Isabel Bermúdez-González, Guillermo José Economía circular Pequeñas y medianas empresas This paper examines how small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) engage in the circular economy (CE) through business association (BA) membership, perceptions of ease access to finance (AF), and institutional quality (IQ). Building on social capital theory, we argue that BA membership not only provides resources but also channels non-financial forms of public entrepreneurship and SME-supporting policies. Framed through a theory of change perspective, these soft interventions enhance social and human capital, enabling CE adoption. Using Eurobarometer 486 data from 7,680 SMEs in 39 countries, logit and OLS regressions show that BA membership fosters CE actions while increasing awareness of financial barriers, with AF partially mediating this link. IQ moderates these dynamics: in high-IQ contexts, non-financial support reduces the salience of financial barriers; in low-IQ contexts, AF perceptions remain decisive. We contribute by integrating SCT with public entrepreneurship to explain policy conditions shaping SME sustainability. 2025-12-16T10:34:11Z 2025-12-16T10:34:11Z 2025 2025 journal article Sánchez-Teba, E.M.; González-Fernández, A.I.; Bermúdez González, G. (2025). Shaping the circular economy future: the role of business associations, access to finance and institutional quality in SMEs. Journal of Small Business Management https://doi.org/10.1080/00472778.2025.2591696 https://hdl.handle.net/10630/41126 10.1080/00472778.2025.2591696 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Taylor & Francis