Product lifetime extension through design: Encouraging consumers to repair electronic products in a circular economy

Our production and consumption patterns of electronic products exceed the limits of what one planet can handle. Prolonging product lifetimes decreases the value losses caused by the destruction of existing products and lowers the amount of e-waste. Repair is an impactful strategy to tackle the issues associated with the production and consumption of electronic products. However, most discarded products are never repaired during their lifetime. Literature proposed several design for repair strategies, predominantly from a technical (engineering) perspective. However, a technically repairable design may not automatically result in repair behavior. Consumers and their behavior play a key role in prolonging the lifetimes of our daily used products.

The objective of this thesis is to explore the role of design in stimulating consumers to extending product lifetimes via repair. A consumer perspective investigates why consumers decide to prematurely replace products and their barriers towards repair. Design and marketing strategies to stimulate repair (e.g., support in failure diagnosis, modularity, and lifetime labels) are identified from literature. The effectiveness, boundaries and the required conditions of these strategies are tested in several empirical studies. They showed that high perceived repair self-efficacy, explicit cues guiding the repair act, and specific information about product’s reliability and upgradeability can increase consumers’ repair intentions.

By adopting a consumer-centric approach, this thesis offers contributions to design research on product lifetime extension and repair. However, creating a repairing society is not solely a consumer’s responsibility. One should realize that product lifetime extension requires a shift in current industry practice and businesses organization, as well as the design of appropriate policies. Therefore, a systemic approach and cooperation between all involved stakeholders is required. Designers, researchers and policymakers can use our insights to stimulate much-needed consumer repair practices of (electronic) products within a circular economy.