What, How and Who? Consumers’ View on Necessary Measures to Promote Repair in Austria

Repair plays an integral role in establishing a circular economy. However, repair has suffered from decreasing supply and demand over the last decades due to consumerism and the throwaway culture. Recently, there are attempts to reverse this trend. Several measures to promote repair have been instituted by the European Union, individual member states and other countries around the world. Yet, up to now their effectiveness seems to be low. One explanation for this is the missing participation of consumers in the process of measure-creation, which leads to their views and expectations about repair promoting measures not being heard. In this paper, we focus exactly on those issues and try to identify what measures consumers expect to make repair more attractive as well as how and by whom these could and should be implemented. Using semi-structured interviews with Austrian citizens we found that consumers expect various concurrent measures, including financial incentives to decrease repair cost and improved information to reduce uncertainty about the process. They strongly indicated that politics and manufacturers should be held accountable, and that the role of consumers is less powerful. Yet, interestingly, they also indicated a willingness to accept higher product prices if they are accompanied by repair-enhancing measures like prolonged warranty periods. Finally, our interviewees emphasized the necessity to consider the broader context of prolonging product-lifetimes. For example, they expect measures to make products more durable from the outset and would also like to be educated about the proper use of products to minimize or avoid defects.