Identifying Circular Business Models Through Traditional and Snowball Sampling

Only 9% of the businesses in the European Union are circular. In Romania, the dimension of this population has not been determined. Circular businesses are seen as hard to reach or hard to capture population characterized by low numbers, members hard to identify with not entirely known behavior, with difficulty in identifying commonalities among them and information rarely available. Using a multiple-layer sampling process composed of traditional and snowball sampling, the paper contributes to identifying the population of sustainability-oriented innovators or circular businesses in the textile and clothing sector in Romania. The results of this targeted sampling consisted in a list of 21 sustainability-oriented innovators in the textile and clothing sector in Romania, featuring actors distributed across the country. The paper provides a snapshot of the dimension of the population of circular economy business models in the textile and clothing sector in Romania and creates a positive context for further analysis of various subjects related to circular business models once the exponents are visible and known. Moreover, this research is offering a framework for sampling circular business models in various sectors.