In the field of sustainability, understanding consumer influences on product lifetimes is deemed essential to reduce the environmental impact of consumption. The aim of the research project which informs this paper was to investigate different ways of thinking about how consumers’ values may contribute to the acceptance, adoption and diffusion of collaborative consumption – an economic model based on sharing, lending, swapping, gifting, bartering, or renting products and services enabled by network technologies and peer communities (cf. Botsman and Rogers, 2011). By making it possible to obtain use of goods without owning them, these alternative patterns of consumption have some potential to prevent new purchases, intensify product usage and promote reuse of possessions that are no longer wanted, thus contributing to longer product lifetimes.
The relationship between values and the participation in collaborative consumption was explored through mixed methods research drawing from two different, if not contrasting, theoretical perspectives to understand consumer behaviour: social psychology and social practice theory. Drawing on their possible complementarity, the investigation was structured in two subsequent and interactive phases: a quantitative data collection and analysis, followed by a qualitative strand of research. The initial quantitative study measured individual values through use of Schwartz's PVQ-R3 tool. Results were followed up through semi-structured interviews facilitated by a series of visual prompts. This paper presents the resulting Individual-Practice Framework, which uniquely combines insights from social psychology and social practice theory to examine and explain the interrelation between the individual, his/her personal values, and specific combinations of the ‘material’, ‘meaning’ and ‘competence’ elements that sustain social practices
