Exploring the drivers behind visiting repair cafés: Insights from mental models

Community initiatives play a critical role in fostering a circular economy. Repair cafés, as free community repair events, have been found to be successful in promoting the culture of repair and educating diverse audiences on product durability. However, research on what drives visitors’ participation in such events is scarce. This information is needed to understand how the initiatives can develop and reach more visitors. This study aimed to explore the drivers behind visiting repair cafés using a mental model approach. Thirty visitors to Dutch repair cafés mapped their mental models of the motivational process behind attending the events by drawing influence diagrams and submitted to interviews that provided more in-depth discussions of their mapped mental models. The findings highlight the key drivers of repair café attendance — namely, environmental concerns; profiting from the knowledge, skills and materials available at repair cafés; the desire to demonstrate the importance of repair; and being part of a social movement. Interestingly, meeting others or experimenting with new repair methods were not seen as important drivers of visiting repair cafés. In conclusion, this study complements the earlier repair motivation literature and offers implications for how to promote consumer participation in repair initiatives. • Repair cafés promote consumer repair and the circular economy. • Analysis of mental models uncovered the drivers behind visiting repair cafés. • Visitors were strongly driven by environmental concerns and their perceived lack of repair skills. • Not all visitors found pleasure in repairing or prioritised learning new skills. • Mental model mapping is a novel method to study repair motivation.