Consumer-oriented interventions to extend smartphones’ service lifetime

A promising strategy to reduce smartphones' environmental footprint is increase their service lifetime, thereby reducing the demand for resource-intensive production of new devices. Most existing literature focuses on production-oriented measures, such as improving repairability, but what remains missing a systematic overview consumer-oriented interventions extend lifetime. In this study, we applied consumer intervention mapping approach by systematically identifying decision situations along smartphone life cycle and that encourage consumers make lifetime-extending decisions. We identify two main mechanisms achieve lifetime extension: retention increasing time during which user keeps device, recirculation passing device an additional user. Altogether, identified 26 different types induce decisions structure these according consumer-influence techniques, e.g., informing about retention/recirculation options impacts caused throughout cycles, persuading creating emotional attachment, nudging through product labels secondhand devices, simplifying execution take-back programs, incentivizing lifetime-extension buy-back programs. These interventions' success in achieving extensions practice depends degree they actually devices (displacement rate), induction re-spending effects associated with interventions, interventions’ implementation feasibility, conflicts interest ecosystem often challenge. • Overview impact Specification extension. Discussion implications interventions.