Consumer adoption of access-based product-service systems

Abstract

Access-based product-service systems (AB-PSS) are business models that can potentially decouple the satisfaction of consumer needs from environmental impacts. Hence, they have been promoted for the circular economy. Their sustainability potential has not yet been realised because consumer adoption is lagging. Although this challenge has been studied for two decades, knowledge to identify and address AB-PSS adoption barriers that matter to consumers is lacking. We hypothesise that the duration of use, the time a consumer obtains exclusive access to a specific product (short-term vs. long-term) and the type of product (bicycles vs. clothing) moderate the importance of AB-PSS adoption barriers to consumers. We compared several adoption barriers across four AB-PSS and found that the duration of use and the type of product significantly moderated the importance of some AB-PSS adoption barriers. More specifically, the Effort to access has a higher influence on consumer preference for short-term AB-PSS, whereas Product quality has a higher influence on consumer preference for long-term AB-PSS. We also found that Effort to access and Product characteristics were more important for bicycle AB-PSS, whereas Contamination and Product quality were more important for clothing AB-PSS. These insights help companies to identify and design out key AB-PSS consumer adoption barriers.