Consumer Perceptions of Upcycled Products: Understanding Facilitators and Barriers to Upcycled Product Adoption

Society is currently facing a major waste problem. Excessive amounts of waste continue to be produced and are insufficiently managed leading to poor environmental and financial outcomes. Upcycled products are an innovative way to encourage more sustainable consumption behaviour and assist in diverting waste from landfill. This study explores consumers’ perceptions of upcycled products across a variety of product categories and identifies key facilitators and barriers to the adoption of these products through a new product adoption perspective. Upcycled products are a unique facet of green innovation adoption that are currently under-researched particularly in a qualitative capacity. Twenty semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with participants ranging in ages from 19-67 with varied occupations and incomes. The findings show that consumers are unfamiliar with upcycled products particularly in commercial contexts and in the food and skincare product categories. Barriers identified by participants included perceived financial, performance and physical risks, uncertainty of source material, scepticism of environmental benefits, presentation and cost expectation of the upcycled product. Upcycled product adoption was found to be facilitated by provision of detailed information, word-of-mouth communication, trialability, perceived environmental benefit and novelty. Some key issues were highlighted by participants regarding the atypicality of these products. While the unconventionality of these products seemingly enhanced novelty perceptions, this atypicality also led to greater concern and uncertainty, particularly for products consumed topically or internally such as skincare or food products. These findings help illustrate the need to distinguish between product categories when discussing consumer perceptions and assist in our understanding of how consumers respond to atypical green innovations. Additionally, these findings are useful to marketers of upcycled products as it provides product-specific implications of what may encourage or discourage the adoption of these products.