Empowering Sustainable Consumption by Giving Back to Consumers the ‘Right to Repair’
Open accessAbstract
Industry has been considered a major actor regarding the actions and changes needed to achieve sustainable development. Different approximations to the topic have been developed to face the challenges of having a more responsible production of goods and services. These approximations include cleaner production, green design, ecodesign, eco efficiency, design for sustainable behavior, sustainable design, and more recently concepts like circular economies among many more. In all these approaches, the attention has been mainly on the production side while consumption has been tackled indirectly. The majority of laws and ordinances that have motivated the emergence of these approaches have traditionally been oriented to producers. However, an European Union (EU) directive launched in October 2019, called “right to repair”, could change this paradigm, empowering consumers by giving them more possibilities of repairing their products instead of discarding them. This paper presents a preliminary discussion about the effects this directive might have on how we consume products now and how we will consume them in the future.
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Repair is a multidimensional and multi-agency activity.
“According to Hernandez, repair is a multidimensional and multi-agency activity [7].”
From Designing for Repair and Extended Lifespan: Consumer Expectations and Economic Constraints (2026) · cites this paper as [7]
Repair must be understood as a socio-technical activity shaped by user capabilities, economic conditions, and product design, not simply a preference to be activated through awareness campaigns alone.
“Repair must therefore be understood as a socio-technical activity shaped by user capabilities, economic conditions, and product design, not simply a preference to be activated through awareness campaigns alone [7,11].”
From Designing for Repair and Extended Lifespan: Consumer Expectations and Economic Constraints (2026) · cites this paper as [7]
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- Authors
- Hernandez, R. J., Miranda, C., & Goñi, J.
- Affiliations
- DILAB School of Engineering, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago 8320000 Chile
- Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (CL)
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2020-01-23
- Volume
- 12
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 850
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3002393844
- Cited by
- 147
- References
- 33
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 33 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 15 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 6
- FWCI
- 17.07
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- dx.doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Edinburgh Research Explorer (University of Edinburgh) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Sustainable Supply Chain Management
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Building and Construction › Sustainable Design and Development
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Environmental Sustainability in Business
- Keywords
- right to repair, sustainable consumption, product repair, consumer empowerment, circular economy, sustainable design, eco-design, eco-efficiency, cleaner production, responsible production
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