The Product User’s Experience of Circular Economy Behaviors: An Interdisciplinary Delphi-Validated Model

Abstract Adoption of Circular Economy (CE) behaviors, such as repair and sharing, remains slow, often due to high costs, inconvenience, limited rewards, or social undesirability. Accelerating the sustainability transition requires that consumers, or product users, experience these behaviors as predominantly positive. To address the lack of a comprehensive framework for understanding such experiences, this paper introduces the Product User’s Experience of CE Behaviors (PUxCEB) Model, developed for durable consumer goods (e.g., clothing and electronics). It is validated through an interdisciplinary Delphi study with two expert groups in CE and Sufficiency, and Consumer Studies and Macromarketing. The Model identifies eight experiential areas: effort, financial, functional, task immersion, aesthetics, social interaction, social status, and moral alignment. Within these areas, the Model captures potential frictions (e.g., costs) and rewards (e.g., gains). It further classifies contextual variables within the experience into four types: mediators (i.e., directly causing effects, such as social status rewards), moderators (i.e., amplifying or reducing effects), determinants (i.e., generating variables), and qualifiers (i.e., determining the salience of variables, based on socio-cultural meanings). The scientific contribution consists of how the Model separates and organizes variables, highlighting the importance of moderators, resource allocation (i.e., time, effort, and money), and the creation of synergies across the experiential areas. In practice, it provides policymakers, businesses, and community organizations with a holistic mapping tool for assessing current, and designing new, initiatives (e.g., policies and business offerings) in which rewards exceeds the frictions, thus ensuring positive experiences of CE behaviors. Directions for future research are proposed to refine the model.