Consumers' willingness to pay for sustainable and innovative products: A choice experiment with upgradeable products

Upgradeable products are designed to allow sequential improvements during their lifetime. Little is known about consumers' preferences for these eco-innovative products. We use a discrete choice experiment to assess the importance of several attributes of product upgrading on consumers' choices. Four types of products are investigated: a washing machine, a wireless (upright) vacuum, a traditional vacuum and a laptop computer. Our experimental design varies several attributes of upgradeability (the type of improvement, the time between initial purchase and first upgrade and the upgrade practical procedure). All other characteristics of products are kept constant except the purchase price and the upgrade fee. Individual values are elicited on the basis of the random utility model (RUM) and an estimated mixed logit model permits to compute willingness to pay indicators. The results indicate that consumers value positively the possibility to improve products' performance through upgrading, especially in terms of energy efficiency. Copyright © 2017 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.