<p>At present, the circular economy has attracted a lot of attention worldwide, and many countries, regions and enterprises have taken various measures to promote the circular economy. The aim of this paper is to provide a methodology for prioritizing from which sectors of the economy to adopt the circular economy are effective on the national level and for finding the key factors within the sector concerned. To this end, the authors first set up economic sectors that are capable of introducing a circular economy and then use real data and an extended analytic hierarchy process to prioritize the efficiency of the circular economy of economic sectors. In addition, factors influencing the economic, social and environmental efficiency of the circular economy in the sectors are established and the correlation and regression analysis is used to find the key factors. The conclusion is that a) the priority sectors of circular economy implementation differ from country to country due to differences in socio-economic conditions, and b) the central link in circular economy is different according to the effectiveness of each sector. This study fills the gap of research on the methodology of determining the central link in circular economy development from a theoretical point of view and can contribute to the proper policy orientation in order to establish the central link for circular economy development and to focus on it from a practical point of view.</p>