Consumer decision-making on repair in a circular economy: A process model based on experiences among young adults and stakeholders in Finland

Abstract

The repair industry, consumer expenditure on repair and the number of repair businesses have been steadily decreasing in many European countries over the last 20–40 years. Our study focuses on consumer repair as a practice, with an emphasis on the interactions between propensity to repair, experience of repair and societal rules and structures that affect repair decisions in different phases of product lifetimes. Moreover, exploring the consumer repair process enables a nuanced understanding of the different paths leading to self-repair, professional repair or non-repair decisions. Drawing on past repair and non-repair experiences (n = 98) of young adults residing in Finland, we develop a consumer repair process model reflective of the individual perceptions, but also of the structural problems that enable or impede repair in the Finnish context. Further, we complement this data with semi-structured interviews of selected repair industry actors and representatives of the educational sector (n = 9), discussing interventions to encourage repair in business, legal and educational systems. The results highlight the role of consumer experience of repair and its situatedness in the shared cultural context, suggesting implications for institutionalizing experience of repair in primary education and other societal activities in order to enhance consumers’ propensity to repair. As a conclusion, we suggest that shifting societal perceptions and rhetoric around repair requires innovative solutions involving actors across production and consumption systems. While not all countries have a strong repair café culture, explicit municipal collaboration with businesses and educators for repair can lead to the development of new services and spaces for systematically embedding repair in the society. These perspectives from the Finnish settings might be particularly informative coming from a country highly involved in the circular economy.