Refill at home for fast-moving consumer goods: uncovering compliant and divergent consumer behaviour
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Tassell, Catriona
Aurisicchio, Marco
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Context and problem
Consumers of fast-moving consumer goods have become accustomed to a culture of convenience and disposability, cultivating practices that are at odds with recycling, reusing, and reducing. Through the concept of refill, the fast-moving consumer goods industry is moving beyond the disposability and recyclability of packaging and products to consider longer term, more durable reuse solutions. If practised as intended, reuse has the capacity to lower the intensity of materials used compared to disposal or recycling. However, research on actual reuse behaviour is sparse, and new work is necessary to explore how consumers handle material resources in reuse offerings.
Method
In-depth interviews with 26 consumers were conducted where the behaviour chain method was used to elicit and map resource journeys for 48 refill at home cases.
Results
Consumers of refill at home offerings were found to display both compliant behaviour and a range of divergent resource handling behaviours, which either increased or decreased the impact of reuse. The behaviours were structured in a framework consisting of six reuse resource handling behaviour types and 17 sub-types, which operate alone or in combination. Whilst consumers displayed many instances of compliant behaviour, overall divergent behaviours were more common, like using multiple reusable products for the same purpose or using single-use products in parallel. Interestingly, consumers of refill at home offerings with a service engaged in compliant behaviour in the majority of the instances. Consumers were found to employ divergent behaviours even at the end of life, often recycling non-recyclable reusable components and occasionally disposing of recyclables in residual waste.
Conclusions
The resulting framework of resource handling behaviours provides a more nuanced understanding of reuse in practice than previously offered. The behaviour chain method was found to have the structural and analytical rigour to dissect difficult-to-predict and complex journeys.
Consumers of fast-moving consumer goods have become accustomed to a culture of convenience and disposability, cultivating practices that are at odds with recycling, reusing, and reducing. Through the concept of refill, the fast-moving consumer goods industry is moving beyond the disposability and recyclability of packaging and products to consider longer term, more durable reuse solutions. If practised as intended, reuse has the capacity to lower the intensity of materials used compared to disposal or recycling. However, research on actual reuse behaviour is sparse, and new work is necessary to explore how consumers handle material resources in reuse offerings.
Method
In-depth interviews with 26 consumers were conducted where the behaviour chain method was used to elicit and map resource journeys for 48 refill at home cases.
Results
Consumers of refill at home offerings were found to display both compliant behaviour and a range of divergent resource handling behaviours, which either increased or decreased the impact of reuse. The behaviours were structured in a framework consisting of six reuse resource handling behaviour types and 17 sub-types, which operate alone or in combination. Whilst consumers displayed many instances of compliant behaviour, overall divergent behaviours were more common, like using multiple reusable products for the same purpose or using single-use products in parallel. Interestingly, consumers of refill at home offerings with a service engaged in compliant behaviour in the majority of the instances. Consumers were found to employ divergent behaviours even at the end of life, often recycling non-recyclable reusable components and occasionally disposing of recyclables in residual waste.
Conclusions
The resulting framework of resource handling behaviours provides a more nuanced understanding of reuse in practice than previously offered. The behaviour chain method was found to have the structural and analytical rigour to dissect difficult-to-predict and complex journeys.
Date Issued
2023-07
Date Acceptance
2023-04-26
Citation
Sustainable Production and Consumption, 2023, 39, pp.1-16
ISSN
2352-5509
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
1
End Page
16
Journal / Book Title
Sustainable Production and Consumption
Volume
39
Copyright Statement
© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Institution of Chemical Engineers. This is an open access article under the CC BY license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550923000908
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2023-05-02