Consumer Perception of Online Attributes in Circular Economy Activities

Nicole Stein, Stefan Spinler, Helga Vanthournout and Vered Blass
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Nicole Stein: Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, 42103 Wuppertal, Germany
Stefan Spinler: WHU—Otto Beisheim School of Management, 56179 Vallendar, Germany
Helga Vanthournout: Wealth of Flows Consulting Ltd, Hong Kong SAR
Vered Blass: The Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Tel Aviv University, 6997801, Israel

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-16

Abstract: Businesses like Airbnb have shown that a successful circular economy (CE) business can operate exclusively online. Although online communication and web appearance attributes have been subject to academic research given accelerated digitization, there is still a lack of knowledge about online attributes and their role in facilitating CE. We close the portrayed knowledge gap by conducting a discrete-choice experiment with best to worst scaling and focusing on the effect of CE experience on the perception of a CE website by ranking nine online attributes, grouped in three subsets. We therefore contribute by identifying online attributes that are perceived as favorable for CE businesses and detect how participation in CE activities affects the perception of these attributes. We find that third-party associated online attributes (e.g., user reviews or third-party guarantees) rank significantly higher throughout CE consumption patterns of the sample, being always amongst the top three attributes. This novel finding on online preferences opens a new direction for further research, as well as allows practitioners to optimize online operations accordingly. Furthermore, we find that users without prior touchpoints with CE have a higher need for information about the business model as compared to CE active users who are more interested in community related attributes.

Keywords: circular economy; perception; online preferences; consumer engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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