Analysis: different aspects of environmental literacy affect our repair or replace behaviour when it comes to home appliances
You walk in the door after a busy day at work, looking forward to sitting down and relaxing with a nice meal. You walk into the kitchen to find a pool of water underneath your fridge and the food inside feels warm. The fridge has broken, and just when it is out of warranty too.
What would you do in this scenario? Call a repair person? Get out the toolbox and start searching YouTube? Or start Googling for a replacement appliance?
When faced with a decision to repair or replace, people often chose to buy new home appliances rather than repair the ones they own. This replacement of household appliances early in their expected lifecycle leads to increasing levels of waste globally, with electronic waste, or e-waste, being the most rapidly growing source.
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From RTÉ Radio 1’s Brendan O’Connor Show, is there a second life for that broken electric appliance hanging around in a drawer in your home?
This can be clearly seen in Ireland, where over 35,121 tonnes of large home appliances were disposed of in 2022, equivalent to the weight of over 350 airplanes. The choice to replace appliances rather than seek repair reflects a linear economy – take, make and dispose – driven by consumerism, planned obsolescence, unrepairable products and low-longevity expectations. The negative impacts of this ‘throw-away society’ include waste production, pollution and depletion of natural resources.
But to try to solve this problem, we must first understand the behavioural factors leading to early household appliance replacement. One which may contribute to early appliance replacement is the ‘what you see is all there is ‘effect. This occurs where consumers fixate on the most obvious information available to them when making a decision.
In the context of home appliances, this is the EU energy ratings label which provides clear, simple information on appliance efficiency and features. These labels help consumers in choosing an appliance, resulting in estimated annual household energy savings of €285.
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From RTÉ Radio 1’s News At One, Elizabeth O’Reilly from Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Ireland on the 25m items of e-waste lying around Irish homes
While the intentions and initial impacts of energy labels are positive, consumers still require considerable energy and financial knowledge to understand label information. When people are faced with highly complex decisions like these which require significant knowledge and skills, they apply mental shortcuts. One such shortcut is where consumers fixate on the colourful, saliant energy rating within energy labels, ignoring other useful information.
This leads to ineffective decision making, where opportunities to enhance the energy efficiency of home appliances by replacing them with better rated new appliances is seen as more environmentally friendly than repairing current appliances.
Evidence of this biased decision making across European consumers was found in the EVIDENT H2020 project. Our research found that this effect could be reduced by presenting energy rating information in a similar colour, size and format as other attributes to reduce fixation on rating and to make other important information (i.e. expected life cycle, water use, quality) more accessible.
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Early appliance replacement might also be driven by the complexity of repair or replace decisions, with quick computational skills needed. This decision is made more challenging by the highly unstable and uncertain consequences of repair, with the final costs and likelihood of success often difficult to determine. Our research found that consumers in Ireland were reluctant to seek repair due to uncertainty, with access to repair people, cost and trust in the quality of repair key factors.
As humans, we are biased towards consequences which are certain and immediate, like buying a replacement appliance, rather than those that are uncertain and longer-term, such as seeking repair where the full cost and outcome is unknown until after the call-out fee is paid. This imbalance between the consequences of choosing to repair or replace may fuel early replacement.
Our research found that the information presented to consumers when making repair/replace decisions may increase this imbalance. While most European consumers were willing to seek repair for broken home appliances, they shifted their choice towards replacement when shown the operating costs of a new appliance. Operational costs may make the financial consequences of replacement more certain for consumers, in contrast with the uncertainty of financial consequences offered by repair, with potential saving negated should the appliance fail.
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From RTÉ News in November 2023, EU Parliament backs new ‘right to repair’ consumer rules
Individual environmental literacy, or the understanding of how our behaviour impacts the environment and what we can do to address these impacts, also appears to play an important role in early replacement of home appliances. Environmental literacy consists of different components including knowledge, awareness, action, skills and attitude.
While research and policy so far have focused on expanding environmental knowledge and attitudes to support behaviour change, little attention has been paid to other aspects of environmental literacy. Results from our research suggest that different aspects of environmental literacy have unique impacts on home appliance repair or replace behaviour.
We need to consider how we might best present information in a way that reduces the complexity of this decision
Interestingly, those with stronger environmental attitude and awareness were less willing to seek repair, while those with higher environmental skills and actions were more likely to seek repair. This suggests that positive environmental attitudes and awareness alone are insufficient to support more environmental choices, such as repair. Instead, experience applying environmental knowledge and skills in real-world contexts may be of more benefit.
This suggests that we need to consider how we might best present information at choice points in a way that reduces the complexity of this decision. This will then allow consumers to pay attention to all useful information, while also looking to build consumer environmental skills and action. It may also help us to reduce our e-waste by reducing premature home appliance replacement.
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
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https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2024/0424/1445211-home-appliances-repair-replace-behavioural-science-psychology/
