A qualitative study on internal motivations and consequences of consumer upcycling

Abstract

This paper investigates consumer upcycling behavior, a consumer-determined Circular Economy (CE) practice. Consumer upcycling involves transforming or repurposing unwanted object(s) to an object which has equal or higher value than the current value of its component(s). Although it is one of the most beneficial practices for environmental sustainability, more so than other practices such as recycling, and it constitutes a concrete exemplar of how consumers can participate in the Circular Economy, literature on consumer upcycling is rather underdeveloped. Performing inductive content analysis on in-depth interviews of 34 consumers mainly from China, this paper develops a holistic framework representing the internal motivations and consequences of consumer upcycling. Specifically, three distinct dimensions of internal motivations for consumer upcycling are identified: core-self oriented, social-self oriented, and object-self oriented motivations. Further, consequences of consumer upcycling at three levels (social, environmental, and economic) are identified. We find that consumer upcycling may spur other consumer-focused pro-environmental behaviors (i.e., spillover effect) and engender positive attitude and behavior toward purchasing of upcycled products (i.e., switchover effect). All in all, this research contributes to the CE literature by providing insight on how consumers could take initiative to enable the Circular Economy.