Right to repair - The Sustainability Management Wiki

Authors: Norma Jurado van Bürck
Edited by: –
Last updated: May 11, 2026

Executive summary

Right to Repair (R2R) is a policy and market framework that aims to remove structural barriers that prevent products from being repaired. For organizations, it matters because repairability influences material use, waste generation, customer relationships, and compliance obligations across product lifecycles—especially for electronics, appliances, and connected devices.

Research describes R2R as more than a single legal right. It spans access to spare parts, tools, repair manuals, diagnostic software, and the freedom to choose between manufacturer service, independent repair, or self-repair. These access conditions interact with product design choices (for example, modularity and ease of disassembly), business models (after-sales revenue and service networks), and legal constraints (intellectual property, licensing, and anti-circumvention rules).

The literature traces a shift from repair as a default practice to manufacturer-controlled repair markets, reinforced by planned obsolescence strategies, software locks, restrictive contracts, and limited parts availability. Since 2019, R2R has moved into an institutionalization phase, with policy instruments that increasingly link repair to circular economy objectives, waste prevention, and consumer protection. The EU tends to emphasize environmental policy and product requirements, while the US focuses more on consumer choice and competition in aftermarkets.

For implementation, organizations can treat repairability as a cross-functional capability. Priorities include embedding design-for-repair in product development, ensuring long-term parts and information availability, managing software and cybersecurity considerations transparently, and aligning service, logistics, and partner governance with open repair access. Measuring repair outcomes (repair rates, turnaround time, parts availability, and customer satisfaction) helps translate R2R into operational improvements and sustainability performance.

1 Introduction

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is one of the fastest-growing waste streams worldwide.¹ The Global E-waste Monitor 2024 estimates global waste generation in 2022 at approximately 62 billion kilograms, with an average annual increase of around 2.3 billion kilograms since 2010.² This rising waste volume is associated, among other factors, with shortened product lifecycles and manufacturing and design strategies that hinder or restrict repair.² ³ The consequences extend from environmental degradation and resource depletion to socio-economic effects and globally externalised environmental and labor impacts, as well as regulatory and political tensions concerning repair and product responsibility.⁴ Against this background, product repairability has gained increasing relevance in academic, political, economic, and societal debates.⁵ ⁶

Within this context, the Right to Repair (R2R) has emerged as a central regulatory and discursive concept. It refers to a politically and legally contested framework aimed at securing access to repair manuals, spare parts, and tools, while limiting manufacturer-imposed repair restrictions.⁶ ⁷ Improved access to such repair resources may contribute to extending the useful lifetime of electrical and electronic devices.² Moreover, R2R is increasingly embedded in broader debates on sustainability and resource governance.⁸ ⁹ ¹⁰ Simultaneously, a transnational civil society movement advocating expanded repair rights has gained momentum, challenging existing repair constraints and demanding structural regulatory reform.⁶ ⁸ In both the United States (US) and the European Union (EU), legislative initiatives addressing consumer repair rights have been introduced or are under discussion.¹¹ ¹²

Academic engagement with R2R has grown substantially in recent years. For the period from 1995 to 2025, a bibliometric analysis identifies an average annual growth rate of 10.68% and an average citation rate of 32.42 citations per publication.² The thematic distribution of the literature spans legal, economic, technological, sociological, and environmental dimensions, indicating both disciplinary diversity and interdisciplinary relevance.² Accordingly, this thesis aims to systematically review, structure, and synthesize the current state of academic research on the Right to Repair. It seeks to identify the disciplinary perspectives and discursive framings through which R2R is conceptualised and to analyze how these perspectives structure firm-level incentive, control, and decision-making logics within the regulatory contexts of the EU and the US. Accordingly, the central review question guiding this thesis is: Which disciplinary perspectives and discursive framings of the Right to Repair can be systematically identified in the academic literature, and how do these structure firm-level incentive, control, and decision-making logics within the regulatory contexts of the EU and the US? To address this question, the methodological approach and literature review strategy are first outlined. Subsequently, historical developments, key definitions and conceptual distinctions, and the main analytical dimensions of R2R are examined. Building on this theoretical foundation, a practice-oriented analysis evaluates firm-level implications as well as key drivers and barriers to implementation.

Beyond its academic contribution, this master’s thesis will be integrated into the Sustainability Management Wiki of the Management Research Group at the University of Oldenburg. In doing so, it contributes to an open knowledge platform that consolidates and systematises central topics in sustainability management. The results expand the wiki by adding a Right-to-Repair perspective and provide scientifically grounded content for broad use.

2 Literature review

R2R is not a clearly defined legal institution, but a multi-layered concept that is specifically defined and justified in different disciplinary contexts. To make this ambiguity analytically manageable, this chapter systematises the existing state of research and presents the conceptual, historical, and theoretical foundations of this thesis.

The literature analysis is structured into four consecutive sections that build on one another. Section 2.1 serves to establish the conceptual foundation of the thesis by developing an understanding of repair and defining the central dimensions of R2R. Section 2.2 provides a historical context for R2R and traces its development from a culturally embedded repair practice to a contested and increasingly regulated consumer right. Building on this, Section 2.3 establishes the theoretical framework of the thesis, embedding R2R in overarching debates on sustainability, political economy, and social transformation by drawing on approaches from the Circular Economy, post-growth theory, degrowth theory, and the principle of sufficiency. Finally, Section 2.4 summarises the key findings of the literature using a PESTEL-oriented analytical approach. This heuristic structuring grid makes it possible to systematically evaluate the diverse disciplinary contributions and to identify key factors influencing the design, implementation, and impact of R2R in a differentiated manner.

2.1 Conceptual foundations: Definitions and delimitation

A precise conceptual clarification is a prerequisite for an analytically sound examination of R2R. Since R2R is conceptually based on the understanding of repair, repair is first discussed as a multi-layered concept and distinguished from related terms. Building on this, R2R is defined and situated within its fundamental structural principles. These definitions form the conceptual basis for further analysis.

2.1.1 Definition of repair

According to Boniface et al. (2024), repair is not understood as a uniform process, but as a continuum with four manifestations: repair as the remedying of a defect to restore functionality, customisation as adaptation to individual usage needs, repurposing as conversion for new purposes, especially where manufacturer access or usage restrictions make it difficult to restore the original function, and tinkering as experimental and creative intervention. This expanded understanding of repair goes beyond purely technical defect correction and encompasses aspects of usage practices, autonomy, and regulation.⁴ In the literature on the Circular Economy and product life extension, repair is also understood as a strategy for maintaining functional value, which extends the useful life of products by fixing specific defects.¹³ ¹⁴ From an economic perspective, repair is understood as a service-based restoration of existing products, which may include the use of refurbished spare parts, but does not include the sale of repaired or refurbished products.¹⁵ Beyond technical and economic dimensions, repair is understood in the social sciences as an everyday, often invisible practice that contributes to the stabilisation of material and social order.¹⁶ Perzanowski (2022) adds that repair can encompass both functional and aesthetic aspects, but unlike preventive maintenance, it is reactive and differs from restoration, which can alter the historical and cultural significance of a product as a historically evolved object through the systematic removal of signs of ageing and use.⁶

Furthermore, repair is distinguished from reconstruction. While repair is limited to restoring the functionality of an existing product through limited intervention, reconstruction in the context of patent law is considered to be the complete reproduction or replication of a product, which goes beyond the permissible scope of repair and requires the consent of the patent holder.⁶ ⁹ ¹⁷ Similarly, concepts related to repair, such as refurbishing and remanufacturing, are clearly distinguished from it. Refurbishing refers to more comprehensive interventions that include cosmetic improvements in addition to the replacement of heavily used components, while remanufacturing is an industrial process aimed at restoring like-new quality and usually requires close involvement of the original manufacturer.⁹ ¹⁷

2.1.2 Definition of the right to repair

In the scientific literature, R2R is understood not only as a legal right, but as a multidimensional concept of access to repair and choice. It refers to the right of consumers to repair products themselves or have them repaired by third parties of their choice, and includes access to the necessary tools, spare parts, technical information, and diagnostic software.⁴ ¹⁰ R2R thus primarily addresses access to repair prerequisites beyond exclusively manufacturer-bound structures and strengthens users’ scope for decision-making and action.⁴ The starting point for R2R is an expanded understanding of ownership that includes not only the formal possession of a product, but also control over its use, maintenance, and functionality.¹⁸ Against this background, R2R challenges practices that restrict consumer autonomy, for example by excluding independent repair providers from access to spare parts, by implementing restrictive software architectures, or by pursuing strategies of planned obsolescence.⁴ ⁸ ¹⁸ R2R is conceptualised as a spectrum between open and controlled access in which the interests of manufacturers, consumers, and regulatory authorities are balanced.¹ The aim of the R2R approach is to strike a balance between manufacturer control and user access that implies “neither complete control nor full access” (Svensson et al., 2018, p. 12).¹

Beyond its definitional specification, R2R is also described in the literature as a socially and politically contested concept that is negotiated in different regulatory, economic, and social contexts.¹ ⁴ ⁸ ¹⁸ These discursive and normative characteristics are explored in depth in the following chapters.

For the purposes of this thesis, R2R is understood as a regulatory and market-related claim to design and governance that safeguards the choice between self-repair (DIY) and repair by third parties, as well as access to key repair inputs, in particular spare parts, tools, technical information, or diagnostic systems.¹ ⁴ ¹⁸

2.2 Historical development of the right to repair: From practice to regulation

R2R did not emerge as a singular regulatory measure, but is the result of a long-term structural change in the relationship between users, products and manufacturers. Over long periods of history, repair was a natural cultural practice for maintaining, adapting and extending the life of material goods.¹⁹ However, with industrialisation, the expansion of mass consumption and increasing technologization, the logic of production, use and disposal shifted fundamentally, causing repair-related practices to lose importance in many consumer contexts, while manufacturer strategies for controlling product life cycles, repair markets and technical knowledge gained in significance.⁶ ¹⁹ ²⁰ ²¹ This chapter traces the historical development of R2R as a response to this structural transformation. It reconstructs the transition from repair as an everyday practice to a legally contested and increasingly regulated consumer right, dividing it into four chronological and thematic phases: the pre-industrial foundations of repair, the rise of manufacturer control and the first antitrust and patent law precedents, the emergence of the R2R movement, and the most recent phase of institutional consolidation in the context of sustainability and circular economy policies. Figure 1 illustrates the phases of R2R development presented in this chapter in the form of a chronological timeline.

Figure 1: Chronological timeline of the historical development of R2R (own illustration by N. Jurado van Bürck)

2.2.1 Repair as the default mode of material use before industrial modernity

Repair is considered a fundamental form of interaction between humans and their material environment.¹¹ ²² Archaeological findings show that repair was already being used in the Palaeolithic Age as a conscious strategy for preserving value and extending the useful life of tools.²³ Over long periods of history, the increasing technical complexity of artefacts went hand in hand with growing demands on repair-related knowledge.⁶ ²²

In pre-industrial contexts, repair does not appear in the literature as a separately defined market service, but as an integral part of everyday usage practices. Repair practices included both specialised craft activities and forms of household-based self-repair, which coexisted in parallel and complemented each other. Especially outside of wealthy elites, self-repair was part of the routine handling of material goods.¹⁹ In the transition to the early phase of mass consumption at the beginning of the 20th century, the ability to repair remained a central structural prerequisite for the spread of consumer technologies. This was supported both by the existence of functioning secondhand markets and by the increasing standardization and interchangeability of components, which tended to facilitate repairs.³ ¹⁹ ²⁴ The technical foundations for industrial standardization of components, which systematically facilitated repairs, were laid as early as the late 18th century, for example by Maudslay’s standardised threads, and further reinforced in the early 20th century by Ford’s use of interchangeability of parts as a production strategy and by the provision of tool kits and repair manuals.⁶ ²⁵ This assumption of repairability changed fundamentally over the course of the 20th century.

2.2.2 The transition to manufacturer-controlled repair in the 20th century

The period from the 1920s to the early 2000s marks the transition from a culture of repair to an era increasingly characterised by strategies to shorten product lifecycles and efforts to control repair and spare parts markets.⁶ ⁸ ¹¹ ²⁰ ²⁶ ²⁷ ²⁸ As early as the first decades of the 20th century, modern consumer societies saw a strategic shift in product manufacturing towards planned obsolescence,²⁸²⁹⁴³ understood as a design and marketing approach that either limits technical durability or deliberately reduces the perceived value of a product.²⁹ The latter occurs, among other factors, through forms of style obsolescence¹¹, which are described as part of psychological obsolescence mechanisms, defined as the deliberate creation of perceived outdatedness independent of actual functionality.⁶ In the context of growing industrial production capacities, these strategies simultaneously reinforced incentives to stabilise demand and promote replacement purchases.⁶ ³⁰ An early example of this was the Phoebus cartel, an international light bulb cartel of the 1920s, which coordinated efforts to shorten the lifespan of light bulbs in order to increase sales and turnover.⁶

From the 1950s onwards, in parallel with such strategies, the electrification and computerization of products was used to build a bundle of legal and technical barriers that centralized control over repair and spare parts.³ ³¹ The transition from mechanical to electronic components made it considerably more difficult for laypeople and even experienced mechanics to diagnose malfunctions, creating dependencies on manufacturer-provided information, diagnostic tools and software.³ ⁶

The monopolisation of the aftermarket increasingly became the subject of legal disputes in the second half of the 20th century. As early as the 1950s, International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) became the subject of an antitrust investigation because leasing and access restrictions prevented independent repairs. The consent decree issued in 1956 required IBM to sell spare parts and relevant resources to third parties, which strengthened the secondary market and stimulated competition in the repair sector.⁶ ³² ³¹ ³³ In addition, the ruling in Aro Manufacturing Co. v. Convertible Top Replacement Co. (1961) established the patent law distinction between permissible repair and impermissible reconstruction, thereby confirming the owner’s right to repair derived from the exhaustion doctrine, which includes the replacement of unpatented parts.¹ ⁶ ²⁸ The Eastman Kodak Co. v. Image Technical Services (1992) ruling profiled the aftermarket, understood as the market for repair, maintenance and replacement parts downstream of the primary sale, as an independent relevant market and made it clear that monopolistic abuse can be liable under competition law.⁶ ³⁴ ³⁵ Notwithstanding these precedents, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) continued to secure control over repair markets through the targeted use of contractual instruments and intellectual property (IP) rights.³ ²¹ ²⁸ End User License Agreements (EULAs) were used in particular for software-controlled products to contractually restrict consumer rights after purchase.³ ³⁶ These contractual restrictions aimed to effectively circumvent the principles of the first-sale doctrine, which allows the resale, rental or other disposal of lawful products or works, by structuring rights of use as licenses rather than sales.²¹ ³⁶ The enforceability of restrictive EULAs has been treated as legally binding in parts of the US courts since the mid-1990s.³ ³⁵ ³⁶

In addition to contractual measures, software barriers were legally secured through statutory anti-circumvention regimes: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the US (1998) and Article 6 of the Information Society Directive 2001/29/EC in the EU (2001) established legal protection for technological protection measures (TPMs),⁶²¹¹¹⁴ the circumvention of which for diagnostic and repair purposes could be sanctioned.¹ ⁶ ²¹

With increasing environmental pollution caused by an emerging throwaway society¹¹⁵ and the erosion of historically embedded repair practices, a political reaction began in the 1990s that more explicitly addressed the ecological consequences of shortened product lifespans. During this period, the debate on planned obsolescence experienced a revival,⁴³ while the circular economy gained prominence as a theoretical framework for resource-efficient economic organization.¹⁴ These developments culminated in the Council Directive 1999/31/EC on the landfill of waste (1999), which anchored waste reduction at the European level.¹³

2.2.3 Politicisation of repair and initial regulatory openings (2000-2019)

The emergence of the global R2R movement in the early 2000s can be understood as a response to the increasing layering of technological, contractual, and legal repair barriers, which systematically made it difficult or impossible for consumers and independent providers to access repair services.⁶ ⁸ ³¹ A central reference point of the movement is the demand that products be “repaired or modified by consumers, manufacturers or third-party repair shops” (Marikyan and Papagiannidis 2024, p. 36).¹² The movement is supported by a heterogeneous coalition of technology activists, consumer advocates, independent repair shops, tinkerers and environmental initiatives that frame repair as both a question of consumer autonomy and environmental justice.⁶ ⁸ ³² ¹⁸ ³¹ The movement originated in the US before spreading to the EU, where it gained significant momentum from 2012 onwards.³² ³¹ ³⁷ At the same time, local, citizen-driven grassroots initiatives such as Repair Cafés and Fixit Clinics emerged, contributing to the reactivation and visibility of repair as a social practice.⁶ ⁸ ³⁸

Parallel to mobilization at the civil society level, the first sectoral regulatory initiatives began to emerge, initially in the US automotive sector. As early as 2001, a Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act was proposed at the federal level, but it did not become law.⁴ ⁶ ²⁶ A turning point came in 2012 with the passage of the R2R Act on the repair of motor vehicles (M.G.L. c. 93K) in Massachusetts,¹¹⁶ which obliged manufacturers to make diagnostic and repair information, spare parts and tools available to independent operators.³⁹ This state-level success led to an industry-wide voluntary agreement (memorandum of understanding)¹¹⁷ in 2014 which extended the scope to the entire US market.⁶ ²⁶ ²⁸ In the following years, the political debate spread to other product categories, such as the agricultural sector and digital electronics.⁶ ²⁶ ²⁸ In addition, DMCA exemptions introduced limited legal scope for circumventing technical protection measures for diagnostic and repair purposes for the first time in 2018.¹⁵¹¹⁴¹¹⁸ However, numerous fair repair legislative initiatives at the state level failed until 2019, mainly due to resistance from the manufacturer lobby.¹ ¹⁵ ²¹ ²⁶ ³¹

In the EU, repair gained relevance during the same period, particularly in the context of waste and recycling policies.¹ ¹³ The Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, introduced in 2003, established Extended Producer Responsibility in the electronics industry, thereby creating indirect incentives for more durable and repair-friendly product design.¹¹ ¹³ ⁴⁰ ⁴¹ With the Waste Framework Directive of 2008, repair was formally embedded in the waste hierarchy,⁶³¹¹⁹ while the Ecodesign Framework Directive (2009/125/EC) enabled product-related requirements for repairability and spare parts availability for the first time from 2009 onwards.⁴² This development was accompanied by more explicit political positions from 2015 onwards, including the French ban on planned obsolescence, as well as the EU Circular Economy Action Plan (2015) and the EU Ecodesign Working Plan (2016-2019), which systematically upgraded repairability, durability and consumer information.¹ ¹⁵ ⁴³ ⁴⁴

2.2.4 Institutionalisation of repair as a consumer right (since 2019)

The most recent phase of R2R development has been marked by the regulatory institutionalization of R2R and parallel, partially reactive concessions by major OEMs. At European level, far-reaching ecodesign requirements were introduced in October 2019 as part of the Ecodesign Framework Directive (2009/125/EC)⁴² to promote the repairability and recyclability of products. For the first time, the new regulations included explicit, mandatory repair requirements that applied to specific electrical and household appliances and obliged manufacturers to modify product design to facilitate disassembly for repair and recycling purposes. In addition, they require manufacturers to provide spare parts and repair information for a specified period (up to ten years for certain household appliances).¹ ¹⁵ ³⁷ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

In February 2020, this development was supplemented by the publication of the European standard EN 45554:2020, which defines methods for assessing the repairability, retrofitability and reusability of energy-related products.⁴⁷ With the New Circular Economy Action Plan,⁴⁸ the European Commission reaffirmed its strategic focus on sustainable production and consumption in 2020 and announced, among other things, measures to strengthen the right to repair for consumers and public procurers as part of the transition to a European circular economy.⁸ ⁴⁸ ⁴⁹ At European level, EU Member States began to expand existing regulations with national additions. In 2020, France pioneered the introduction of the index of repairability (indice de réparabilité)¹²⁰ to transparently assess the repairability of specific consumer products, which was implemented in 2021.⁴⁶¹²¹ Finally, in April 2024, the European Parliament adopted the Directive on common rules promoting the repair of goods, which aims to make repairs easier and more attractive for consumers.⁵⁰ ⁵¹

At the same time, the Massachusetts automotive repair law of 2012 was amended in the United States in 2020 to ensure that independent repair shops and vehicle owners have access to telematics systems from model year 2022 onwards.⁶ ³² ⁵² In May 2021, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), in its report Nixing the Fix, confirmed the negative effects of repair restrictions on consumers and competition.⁵³ ⁵⁴ Subsequently, President Joe Biden issued Executive Order 14036,¹²² following which the FTC adopted a new policy to address unfair and monopolistic repair restrictions.⁶ ²⁸ ⁵³ This marked the first time that the R2R agenda received explicit support at the federal level.⁵³ The passage of the Digital Fair Repair Act in New York in December 2022 strengthened R2R for digital electronics by providing access to repair information and parts.⁴ ⁵⁵ In April 2023, Colorado became the first state with a specific R2R law for agricultural equipment.⁵⁶ ⁵⁷ By 2024, 28 US states had already introduced R2R-related bills and initiatives.⁵⁸

In addition to these legislative developments, major manufacturers made their first voluntary concessions: in November 2021, Apple announced its Self Service Repair Program, which gives consumers access to parts, tools and instructions for selected iPhone models.¹⁸ ⁵⁹ ⁶⁰ This trend continued in 2022, when both Samsung and Google entered into partnerships with iFixit to provide replacement parts and repair manuals for selected devices for self-repair.¹⁸ ⁶¹ ⁶²

The historical development of R2R illustrates a profound shift from a practice rooted in craftsmanship to an increasingly regulated, digitally mediated consumer right that is currently being renegotiated in the context of technological progress, property rights and sustainability.

2.3 Theoretical framework of the right to repair

The theoretical framework of R2R is based on three complementary theoretical approaches, which are systematically developed below and guide the structure of this chapter. The Circular Economy (CE) forms the systemic framework in which repair is anchored as a strategy for slowing resource loops and retaining products and materials within the economic system in the long term. Post-growth (PG) and degrowth (DG) approaches expand this perspective by incorporating growth-critical and normative dimensions. These link repair with material reduction and ecological limits. Finally, the sufficiency perspective highlights the micro- and meso-level economic conditions under which repair acts as a demand- and throughput-reducing practice, thereby playing a central role in reducing resource consumption. Taken together, the three perspectives enable a coherent theoretical positioning of R2R as a political-economic instrument at the interface of resource policy, consumption regulation and market transformation.

2.3.1 Circular economy as the systemic framework for the right to repair

The theoretical framework of the Circular Economy (CE) forms the analytical starting point for conceptualising R2R as a strategy for slowing resource loops and preserving material product value. CE theory draws on a range of intellectual traditions, some of whose conceptual foundations date back to the mid-20th century. Key points of reference include Industrial Ecology, Cradle-to-Cradle approaches, and the Performance Economy.¹⁴ ⁶³ ⁶⁴ ⁶⁵ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ The term Circular Economy was coined by Pearce and Turner (1990) and gained prominence from the 2010s onwards, particularly in political, economic and management discourse, not least through the activities of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation.⁶⁷ ⁶⁸ ⁶⁹ ⁷⁰ Conceptually, the CE is understood as a systemic alternative to the linear take-make-(use)-dispose logic and aims to retain materials, products and components within the economic system for as long as possible, thereby overcoming the traditional end-of-life paradigm.⁹ ⁶⁶ ⁷¹ ⁷² The CE seeks to decouple economic value creation from resource consumption and environmental impacts.⁶⁵ ⁷⁰ ⁷³ This objective is primarily pursued through strategies of “slowing, closing, and narrowing material and energy loops” (Geissdoerfer 2017, p. 759).⁶⁹ The concept is situated across different system levels: “micro level (products, companies, consumers), meso level (eco-industrial parks) and macro level (city, region, nation and beyond)” (Kirchherr et al.⁷⁴ p. 229).⁷⁵

Within this framework, repair is constitutive of strategies aimed at slowing resource loops and plays a key role in the CE. It is regarded as a core strategy for slowing resource loops and is classified in CE literature as a central value-retention process, aimed at maintaining products at their highest functional and economic value for as long as possible.¹⁰ ⁶³ ⁶⁶ ⁶⁷ ⁷⁶ Within the R-hierarchy of the CE, repair is assigned to the inner loops, following the upstream strategy of resource reduction, and is prioritized over downstream options such as refurbishing, remanufacturing, or recycling, as it involves comparatively low additional material and energy inputs.⁶⁷ ⁷⁰ ⁷¹

Against this backdrop, R2R can be understood as a central political and regulatory instrument for operationalising CE objectives. It seeks to remove structural barriers to repair, such as restrictive product design, limited spare parts availability, or asymmetric access to information, thereby safeguarding the implementation of repair-based value retention strategies.¹ ⁸ ¹¹ Due to its potential to extend product lifetimes and reduce resource consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, R2R is characterised in the literature as a “key circular economy strategy” (Lloveras 2025, p. 335).⁸ Figure 2 illustrates repair as an inner-loop value-retention process within the CE and positions R2R as a regulatory enabler facilitating access to repair and the implementation of repair-based circularity strategies.

At the same time, Colombijn and Egboko (2023) emphasize that R2R is often interpreted primarily through a growth- and efficiency-oriented lens within the dominant CE discourse. In this reading, repair is primarily legitimized as a resource-efficiency measure aimed at optimizing existing production and market structures, while its potential as an autonomous political and normative framework for advancing ecological objectives remains comparatively underexplored.³⁸

Figure 2: Repair as an inner-loop value-retention process within the CE and R2R as a regulatory enabler (own illustration by N. Jurado van Bürck based on and substantially adapted from Geissdoerfer et al. (2020)¹²³)

2.3.2 Post- and degrowth as growth-critical frameworks for the right to repair

While R2R is often framed in the dominant CE discourse as a market-compatible strategy aligned with green growth logics, post-growth and degrowth approaches situate R2R within a growth-critical understanding that focuses on ecological limits and fundamentally questions the growth-oriented logic of capitalist production and consumption systems.⁸

The term degrowth (décroissance) originated in French intellectual circles in the early 1970s and has since developed into a diverse theoretical, political, and societal discourse.⁷⁷ ⁷⁸ ⁷⁹ Degrowth (DG) functions both as an analytical framework for growth-critical scientific discourse and as a political guiding principle for social movements, particularly in southern Europe, that strive for a transformation beyond permanent economic growth.⁸⁰ ⁸¹ Theoretically, DG is situated at the intersection of ecological-economic, socio-ecological, economic, and cultural anthropological, and critical political-economic traditions of thought.⁷⁹

The German-language post-growth debate developed largely independently of the Anglophone and Southern European DG discourses and is regarded in the literature as an independent strand of growth-critical theory.⁷⁸ However, both post-growth (PG) and DG approaches share the fundamental assumption that permanent economic growth is incompatible with ecological objectives.⁸ ⁷⁸ ⁸² ⁸³ ⁸⁴ PG is used in some literature as an umbrella term for different growth-critical positions.⁸⁵ ⁸⁶

In the literature, a distinction is often made between PG approaches, which aim for low or stagnant growth rates without necessary economic contraction, and DG positions, which regard a conscious decline in production and consumption as an inevitable prerequisite for ecological sustainability.⁷⁷ ⁸¹ ⁸⁷ ⁸⁸ DG is predominantly anti-capitalist in orientation and encompasses not only material reduction but also profound institutional and social structural change.⁷⁷ ⁸¹ ⁸⁹

Against this theoretical background, R2R is understood, particularly in PG-oriented approaches, as a central sufficiency-related strategy aimed at extending product lifetimes, substituting new products and reducing material throughput.⁸ ⁹⁰ In DG-oriented perspectives, repair is also discussed as part of a broader transformation framework in which it contributes to questioning growth-dependent patterns of production and consumption and to a normative debate on which forms of production are socially meaningful and how resource use and value creation should be organized democratically.⁸ Paech (2016) emphasizes in this context that repair practices only contribute to a post-growth economic order if they are embedded in contexts of reduced income and demand and do not merely serve as additive compensation for continuing consumption patterns.⁹⁰ Repair is thus understood as a means of structurally undermining the logic of consumption and replacement rather than functionally stabilising it.⁹¹ Furthermore, PG-oriented perspectives problematise an uncritical endorsement of repairability. They argue that individual R2R must be reconciled with a collective right not to repair, as not all products and production methods are compatible with a growth-critical transformation.⁸

In addition, PG and DG perspectives emphasize repair as a convivial, non-market-based practice that strengthens autonomy from complex and hierarchical technological systems and, especially in community-based formats, enables collective knowledge acquisition.⁷⁷ ⁹² ⁹³ These approaches also understand community repair practices as embryonic forms of alternative value creation beyond purely market-based logics.⁹⁴ ⁹⁵ An in-depth analysis of such practices and their social embedding is provided in Chapter 3.4.3.

2.3.3 Sufficiency as a micro- and meso-economic framework for the right to repair

Within interdisciplinary sustainability research, the concept of sufficiency is considered a third sustainability strategy in its own right, alongside efficiency and consistency.⁹¹ ⁹⁶ ⁹⁷ Linz (2004) points out that the modern idea of sufficiency is part of a long intellectual tradition concerned with moderation and is linked to the dictum “nothing in excess” that has been handed down since ancient times.⁹⁶ In the sustainability literature concerned with this debate, sufficiency is defined as “modification of consumption patterns that help to respect the Earth’s ecological limits, while aspects of consumer benefit change” (Fischer and Grießhammer, 2013, p. 5).⁹⁷ Analytically, a distinction is made between eco-sufficiency as an assessment of the ecological impact of production and consumption patterns and consumption sufficiency as a change in consumption patterns and actions.⁹⁷

The core idea of sufficiency is to reduce the absolute demand for goods and thus reduce resource and energy consumption, which requires fundamental changes in consumption, usage and behavior patterns.⁹⁶ ⁹⁸ ⁹⁹ This strategy explicitly aims at an absolute reduction in the use of natural resources, as efficiency and consistency strategies alone are often not sufficient to limit environmental impacts to a sustainable level.⁹⁶ ⁹⁷ As an explicitly growth-critical elaboration of this understanding of sufficiency, a coherent economic theory was formulated in the 2010s with the “sufficiency economy” (Suffizienzökonomie) developed by Niko Paech, which closely links sufficiency with DG and PG approaches.⁹⁹ In a broader sense, sufficiency addresses the question of the right measure⁹⁶ and encompasses forms of action that are not exclusively aimed at less consumption, but also at qualitatively different consumption.⁹⁷ ¹⁰⁰ In Paech’s growth-critical interpretation, sufficiency is also understood as time-economic rationality, which relieves individuals of consumption-driven overload and thereby increases subjective utility beyond material accumulation.⁸² ⁹⁰

Furthermore, according to Kirchherr et al. (2023), sufficiency is considered a core strategy within the CE and is assigned to the Reduce principle.¹⁰¹ The idea of a sufficiency-based CE aims to ensure that economic activities remain within planetary boundaries through collective control of production and consumption.¹⁰¹ ¹⁰² At the level of CE business models, sufficiency can be operationalised in particular through the Encourage Sufficiency archetype, which focuses on durable products, non-consumption-oriented value propositions, and repair and reuse practices, thereby deliberately slowing down resource use processes.¹⁴ ¹⁰³

Against this backdrop, R2R can be understood as a key micro- and mesoeconomic instrument for implementing sufficiency-oriented strategies, particularly in the broader context of the CE as well as growth-critical DG and PG approaches. The central link lies in extending the useful life of material consumer goods through repair, which reduces the intensity of demand for new products and potentially dampens industrial new production.¹⁰⁴ Since Linz (2004) explicitly links business-level sufficiency to product-specific criteria such as repairability, R2R can also be understood as a regulatory instrument that structurally promotes the implementation of sufficiency-oriented product strategies.⁹⁶ Furthermore, Fischer and Grießhammer (2013) identify extending the useful life of products as a key form of sufficient action, as it both supports changes in consumption patterns (consumption sufficiency) and contributes to compliance with ecological sustainability limits (eco-sufficiency).⁹⁷

2.4 Analytical dimensions of the right to repair

R2R is an interdisciplinary field of regulation and transformation situated within various social, institutional and market contexts. In order to systematically organise this heterogeneity, the chapter follows a PESTEL-based structure and differentiates between political, economic, sociocultural, technological, ecological and legal dimensions along which repair access, market structures and design requirements are changing.

The analysis begins with the political dimension, which examines the discursive frameworks, justificatory logics, and governance and regulatory approaches of R2R, including a comparison of institutional logics in the EU and the US. Building on this, the economic dimension analyzes repair as an intervention in market, competition and after-sales structures and considers both consumer decisions and manufacturer incentive and control logics. The sociocultural dimension classifies repair as a socially embedded practice, before the technological dimension focuses on material and software-based system architectures that enable or limit repairability. The ecological dimension then evaluates repair in life cycle-related contexts and discusses the conditions and limits of ecological impact reduction. Finally, the legal dimension conceptualises repair as a cross-cutting regulatory domain in the interplay of intellectual property, contract, competition and consumer law, as well as related regimes such as data protection and cyber security. The differentiated consideration of these dimensions forms the analytical basis for the company-related and practice-oriented implications developed in the further course of the work. Figure 3 visualises R2R as a regulatory-driven field of transformation whose effects unfold along interdependent dimensions and shape the entrepreneurial environment.

Figure 3: Analytical structuring of the interdependent dimensions of R2R (own illustration by N. Jurado van Bürck)

2.4.1 Political dimension of the right to repair

The political perspective on R2R examines how repair, as a subject of social debate, is politically framed, normatively justified and institutionally regulated. The focus is on discursive interpretations, justificatory logics, and legal and governance-related structures that enable or limit access to repair. Building on the analysis of key discursive framings of R2R, the following section examines political measures, their effectiveness, and hegemonic counter-strategies employed by manufacturers, before comparing the institutional and governance-related logics of regulation in the EU and the US.

2.4.1.1 Discursive and normative interpretations

The political dimension of R2R can be understood primarily through discursive and normative interpretations, which construct repair as a politically relevant subject of social debate. R2R is understood as a heterogeneous interpretative environment in which different groups of actors assign specific normative, political and ideological meanings to repair.⁸

In parts of the academic literature, the R2R movement is conceptualised as an expression of a technology- and product-oriented movement (TPM) that understands material artefacts not as neutral objects of use, but as condensed forms of power and control structures.⁸ ¹⁰⁵ Central to this is the assumption that technical infrastructures, products and design elements themselves are the subject of political debate.⁸ Accordingly, the R2R movement focuses on the design discretion that OEMs use to control product design and access to repairs, questions established design logics, and calls for repair-friendly product architectures and the removal of manufacturer-imposed access restrictions.⁸ Discursive framing is highlighted as a mechanism through which normative ideas are inscribed into technical systems and the political nature of technological design is made visible.¹⁰⁵ ¹⁰⁶ ¹⁰⁷ ¹⁰⁸

A structured classification of discursive heterogeneity is provided by the typology of four dominant frames developed by Lloveras et al. (2025), through which actors in the R2R movement articulate their political and normative concerns.⁸ The Consumer Advocacy Frame focuses on the protection of consumer rights and the principle of ownership and interprets repair restrictions as a violation of property and control rights and as market foreclosure. The aim is to restore competition in the repair market, expand choice and reduce repair costs.⁸ ¹⁰⁹ In the US context, this frame acts as a central driver for the liberalisation of the aftermarket. The Environmental Sustainability Frame positions R2R as a key strategy of the CE, and summarises it as a “market-friendly, green growth-driven agenda” (Lloveras et al., 2025, p. 336).⁸ Repair restrictions are interpreted as an expression of persistent linear economic logic.⁸ ¹¹ Reducing environmental impact by closing product cycles is identified as a key motivation for the emergence of R2R in the EU.¹ ⁸ ¹⁵ The Communitarian Frame emphasizes repair as a communal, value-based practice of sharing knowledge, skills and tools and as the basis for solidarity-based repair ecosystems.⁸ ⁴⁹ ¹¹⁰ The restrictive repair and obsolescence policies of OEMs are interpreted as an attempt to interfere with the foundations of community-based repair practices and limit the development of collaborative repair ecosystems.⁸ ¹¹¹ The Creative Tinkering and Grassroots Innovation Frame understands repair as a creative and experimental approach to technical objects that goes beyond mere restoration.⁸ ²² It frames R2R as a struggle to unleash the potential of technological creativity and to enable DIY repairs and modifications, whose restriction by OEMs is regarded as an obstacle to creativity and innovative capacity.⁸

Furthermore, Lloveras et al. (2025) interpret R2R as a form of counter-hegemonic articulation, following Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of radical democracy. The starting point is the diagnosis that large manufacturers stabilise their market and technological dominance through strategies of control, restriction and assetisation. In this understanding, R2R functions as an empty signifier that can unite heterogeneous social groups in a common opposition to the hegemonic position of OEMs. The political impact of R2R stems from the openness of the term, which makes it possible to integrate different normative concerns.⁸ The counter-hegemonic articulation of R2R produces a “threefold politicising effect” (Lloveras et al., 2025, p. 337).⁸ Manufacturer control is problematised as an expression of structural power relations, an antagonism between OEMs and actors asserting repair rights is articulated, and the signifier “right to repair” is made compatible with broader social concerns such as ecological sustainability, consumer rights and technological openness, beyond concrete repair obstacles.⁸ At the same time, it is pointed out that the R2R movement is exposed to the danger of co-optation insofar as OEMs can allow repairs without relinquishing their control over repair markets, and R2R is narrowed down to an instrumental pursuit of efficiency within the CE, whereby community- and post-growth-related frames have a higher antagonistic potential compared to market- and efficiency-oriented interpretations.⁸

2.4.1.2 Political measures and regulatory logics

Political responses to calls for R2R follow different, sometimes overlapping rationales in key markets. Environmental policy objectives in the context of the CE, alongside consumer and competition policy arguments that are weighted differently depending on the institutional context, are dominant.

In the EU “the R2R is primarily viewed in environmental policy terms” (Lloveras et al., 2025, p. 337).⁸ The promotion of repair is closely embedded in the CE paradigm and is understood as a central element in extending product lifetimes.¹ ¹⁵ ⁹⁵ Repair is explicitly placed in the context of waste management and waste prevention, which, as the dominant political frame, legitimise the promotion of durable and repairable products.¹⁵ ⁹⁵ The central motivation lies in reducing resource use, emissions, and waste associated with the premature disposal of consumer goods.¹⁵ ⁵⁰ This environmental policy framing is embedded in overarching EU strategies such as the European Green Deal and the Circular Economy Action Plan 2020 and is linked in the literature to geopolitical concerns regarding the reduction of dependence on strategically relevant raw materials.¹¹² Boniface (2024) emphasizes the macroeconomic objective and the top-down governance approach.⁴ Regulatory intervention is therefore primarily effected through product and design-related requirements, particularly mandatory ecodesign requirements, which aim to structurally improve repairability.¹ ¹⁵ Consumer policy elements such as transparency, freedom of choice, and access to repair information are included but remain secondary to environmental policy objectives in the political framing of R2R.⁸

In the USA, by contrast, political responses to R2R demands primarily follow a consumer- and competition-oriented rationale.⁸ ¹⁵ The focus lies on consumers’ rights to use and repair their products, as well as on the idea that government intervention is particularly legitimate where manufacturers restrict these rights technically or legally.⁶ ³¹ ¹¹³ This perspective is closely linked to property rights, consumer sovereignty and individual autonomy.³¹ ¹¹⁴ Regulatory initiatives accordingly aim to liberalise markets, remove barriers to competition, and reduce information asymmetries.⁸ ¹⁵ ¹¹⁴ Environmental policy arguments play a comparatively minor role in the US R2R discourse and mainly serve as a supplementary legitimizing framework.¹⁵ ³¹

The effectiveness of political measures aimed at strengthening repair is generally assessed as limited. Key access barriers, such as spare parts availability, access to technical documentation and software-based access restrictions, are often only partially addressed.¹¹ ¹⁵ ¹¹² Pioneering national initiatives, such as tax incentives, for instance the Swedish tax reduction for repair services introduced in 2017, or transparency instruments are discussed as relevant impulses whose structural impact nevertheless remains limited.⁶ ¹⁵ ¹¹² The French repairability index, mandatory since 2021, illustrates that transparency policies are politically viable, yet their behavioural and market impact remains empirically contested.⁴ ⁶ ¹⁵ ⁴⁷ At EU level, the Ecodesign regulations in force since 2019 mark a step forward, as they establish binding requirements for the minimum availability of certain spare parts and access to repair information for professional repairers.⁶ ¹⁵ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ¹¹² At the same time, their scope remains limited due to product group restrictions. In particular, software-based access restrictions persist, and repair access continues in many cases to be organized within manufacturer-bound structures, thereby structurally disadvantaging independent repair providers.⁶ ¹¹ ¹⁵ ²⁶ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ¹¹² For the USA, limitations on effectiveness are highlighted that result from the primacy of the Copyright Act (Title 17 U.S.C.) under federal law and the anti-circumvention regime of §1201 DMCA.⁶ ²¹ ²⁸ ³¹ ¹¹⁴ Even where temporary exemptions are granted to circumvent certain TPMs, these remain categorically limited and time-bound.⁶ ¹⁵ ²¹ ²⁶ ²⁸ ³¹ ¹¹⁴ In addition, the FTC’s report Nixing the Fix (2021) shows that security, IP or liability arguments put forward by manufacturers lack empirical substantiation and that significant information asymmetries and competition problems persist in the repair market.⁵⁴

The political-economic environment of R2R is also characterised by hegemonic counter-strategies pursued by OEMs, aimed at securing control over repair markets and aftermarket structures.³ ⁸ ¹¹² This reflects a shift from classic planned obsolescence to forms of assetisation. Repair is formally permitted, but regulated and capitalised through control of central resources such as spare parts, diagnostic data, tools and software access.⁶ ⁸ These counter-strategies can be grouped into three mechanisms: technical restrictions through design and access controls, such as software-based locks or authentication-bound diagnostic functions,⁶⁸²⁶ legal protection through IP instruments, including copyright and patent law as well as anti-circumvention provisions such as §1201 DMCA, supplemented by contractual terms of use such as EULAs,⁶²¹²⁶²⁸³⁷¹¹³ and political as well as discursive influence through lobbying activities and legitimizing narratives invoking security, quality, and innovation, which frame independent repair as risky or innovation-inhibiting.³ ⁸ ¹⁵ ²¹ ¹¹⁴ Overall, this results in a regulatory regime in which technical, legal, political and discursive elements intertwine and systematically constrain the opening of repair markets.⁶ ⁸

2.4.1.3 Institutional and governance comparison (EU/USA)

The effectiveness of regulatory approaches to promoting access to repairs does not depend solely on normative objectives, but is significantly influenced by institutional embedding, governance structures and enforcement mechanisms. Comparable objectives may therefore result in diverging scopes, degrees of consistency, and enforcement logics in the EU and the US.⁸ ¹⁵

In the EU, a more centralized, regulation-oriented model dominates, in which minimum technical requirements, in particular product group-related ecodesign regulations, ensure repairability at the product design stage.¹⁵ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ Implementation is predominantly top-down, with the European Commission setting technical standards and member states responsible for market surveillance and enforcement.⁹⁵ ¹¹² At the same time, the effects remain selective, as regulation is product group-specific and individual repair practices outside professional structures are addressed only to a limited extent.¹⁵ ¹¹²

In contrast, the US repair market is embedded in a fragmented, federal and market-based governance system. Reform initiatives are primarily pursued at the state level and accordingly vary in scope, binding force and enforcement.¹⁵ ³¹ ¹¹⁴ At the same time, federal protection regimes, in particular copyright and patent law, shape the institutional framework and limit the structural impact of state-level approaches.⁶ ³¹ The role of the FTC is limited to competition and consumer law enforcement without technical standard-setting powers, further limiting its structural leverage at the federal level.⁵⁴ The EU achieves comparatively consistent structural effects through a centralized regulatory framework with technically standardised minimum requirements, whereas the US consumer- and competition-oriented approach can exert only limited structural influence due to federal fragmentation, the primacy of federal IP regimes, and limited technical standard-setting capacities at federal level.⁶ ¹⁵ ³¹ ¹¹⁴ ⁵⁴ ¹¹²

2.4.2 Economic dimension of the right to repair

The economic perspective analyzes R2R as an intervention in existing market, competition, and incentive structures. The focus is on the economic conditions under which consumers decide between repair and replacement, as well as the resulting market reactions and adaptation logics. Repair is not viewed in isolation as an individual consumer decision, but as the result of price relations, information availability, transaction costs, and structural market conditions that limit or favor the actual exercise of repair options. Building on microeconomic decision-making logic, key determinants of repair demand are first analyzed before the following sections examine manufacturer incentive structures, market organization in the repair and after-sales sector, and systemic competition and sustainability effects.

2.4.2.1 Consumer demand and market behavior

Consumer decisions are a potentially relevant mechanism for market control with regard to repair-friendly products and markets. However, their actual effectiveness remains limited, as repair and replacement decisions are not based solely on preferences, but are influenced by price ratios, opportunity costs, access to information, and market-structural restrictions.⁴⁷ ¹¹⁵

From an economic perspective, the decision to repair is based primarily on weighing the costs of repair, expected remaining service life, and perceived effort. Empirical studies show that the willingness to repair decreases significantly as soon as repair costs exceed a certain threshold in relation to the original price. Even at costs of around 20-25% of the original price, willingness to repair decreases significantly.¹¹² ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶ ¹¹⁷ This pricing logic is supported by findings that consumers often consider repairs to be economically unviable as soon as the price of a comparable new product is included as a reference in the decision.¹¹⁸ Falling prices for new products combined with rising, labor-intensive repair costs shift this economic balance further in favor of replacement purchases.¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁹ In addition to direct costs, convenience factors and search-, time-, and access-related barriers, interpretable as frictions, act as key opportunity costs. Limited access to repair services, long processing times and high search costs increase the subjective effort involved in repairs and favor replacement decisions.⁴⁹ ⁵⁴ ¹²⁰ The decline in independent, local repair shops also weakens confidence in successful and reliable repair services and further reduces the willingness to repair, which is already diminished by price and convenience factors.¹⁹ ¹¹⁵

Another key influencing factor is a lack of transparency. Although 77% of European consumers say they prefer repairs in principle, information relevant to their decision-making, such as repairability, durability and expected repair costs, is often lacking at the time of purchase.⁴⁷ ¹²¹ These information deficits act as classic information asymmetries, preventing efficient market decisions and systematically disadvantaging repairs.⁴⁷ In addition, the willingness to repair depends significantly on individual repair skills, cost-related considerations and expectations of the success and benefits of a repair.⁵ A stronger intention to repair is associated with higher satisfaction, emotional self-confidence and a more positive perception of the performance of the repaired device.¹²

Subjective expectations regarding product lifespan also have a significant influence on repair decisions. Low expectations regarding the remaining useful life reduce the likelihood of even considering repairs, while negative previous experiences further reinforce this dynamic.¹²² ¹²³ In addition, psychological obsolescence shapes the perception of products by causing older devices to be considered outdated regardless of their technical functionality.⁶ ¹³ ³⁰ In technology-intensive product categories, accelerated innovation cycles and software-based incompatibilities reinforce the tendency to prematurely replace functional devices.⁶ ⁴⁹ ⁷⁶ Modern product design also makes it difficult to assess technical ageing processes, as many devices are designed as difficult-to-access “black boxes” (Hernandez et al., 2020, p. 6), making it difficult for users to reliably assess the actual condition of a product.¹¹ ¹⁵

Although consumers could theoretically stimulate demand in favor of repair-friendly market structures, their actual influence is significantly limited by structural conditions. Manufacturers control key prerequisites for access to repairs, for example through design decisions, limited availability of spare parts, tools, and repair information, and software-based access restrictions, which will be explored in greater technical and legal detail later in this thesis, thereby systematically limiting repair options even when demand exists.¹ ⁵ ⁶ ¹¹ ⁵⁴ These market conditions explain why high fundamental repair preferences are often not translated into actual repair demand.

2.4.2.2 Manufacturer risks and strategic market logics

The consumer side shows that repair preferences have only limited effect under structural market conditions. Against this background, the following section analyzes the economic risks and strategic market logics of manufacturers that stabilise these restrictions and explain the resistance to regulatory openings in the context of R2R.

From the manufacturers’ point of view, expanded repair access is associated with considerable risks for established sales and business models. Longer product lifespans and declining replacement rates undermine central sales mechanisms of linear production and distribution logics, such that R2R regulations are often considered economically disadvantageous by OEMs.⁶ ⁸ This risk perception ties in with the historical logic of planned obsolescence, in which shortened product life cycles are deliberately used to stabilise continuous demand.²⁷ ¹¹² Accordingly, manufacturers articulated clear reservations about binding R2R requirements in the EU legislative process and instead advocated voluntary, market-oriented and manufacturer-controlled regulatory frameworks, which contributed to the weakening of regulatory ambition.¹¹²

A key economic tension arises from potential cannibalisation effects. Falling repair costs among independent providers can affect both manufacturers’ repair revenues and sales of new products.³² Jin et al. (2023) show that manufacturers respond to such situations with complex price and durability adjustments that depend on the production cost structure and can lead to non-linear price reactions.³² From a manufacturer’s perspective, the potential erosion of aftermarket revenues is particularly risky, as spare parts, maintenance and repair services, and manufacturer-controlled service offerings are key and often particularly high-margin sources of revenue for many OEMs.⁶ ⁸ The increasing strategic importance of these revenue streams in the wake of assetisation is heightening uncertainty about future margin and demand trends in the event of regulatory market openings.⁸ ³² In addition, manufacturers point to liability, safety and quality risks associated with repairs, particularly in the case of safety-related or improper interventions, such as device malfunctions or fire hazards.¹⁵ ²¹ ³¹ ⁵⁴ At the same time, some of these risks are caused in part by the manufacturers’ own product design, for example through limited accessibility of components or complex system architectures that make repairs more difficult or risky.⁶ ¹⁵ ⁵⁴ In the case of software-intensive products, data protection and cyber security arguments also come to the fore, which manufacturers interpret as further sources of risk associated with open repair access.³ ⁶ ²⁸ ⁵⁴

The economic risks described above are reflected in strategic control mechanisms used by OEMs to structure and limit access to repair resources. These control mechanisms take concrete form in the design of repair and after-sales markets, particularly in terms of access rights, competitive conditions, and revenue structures.⁶ ⁵⁴ These market practices are accompanied by discursive strategies in which independent repair is portrayed as a threat to safety, quality, or innovation.⁵⁴ ¹¹² Such patterns of argumentation carry considerable weight in the legislative process and contribute to the limited scope of R2R projects.¹¹²

2.4.2.3 Repair and after-sales markets: Competition and systemic effects

Repair markets are not a peripheral market segment, but an independent and economically significant sector whose structure is largely determined by access conditions, intensity of competition, and institutional market organization. The repair sector is closely linked to after-sales markets, in which manufacturers, authorized networks, and independent providers compete for revenue from maintenance, spare parts, and services, with access to repair-related resources playing a key competitive role.¹⁵ ⁵⁴

There are various market organizations in the repair sector, ranging from repair channels that are completely controlled by manufacturers to hybrid structures and largely independent aftermarkets.⁵⁴ In many industries, however, repair governance is “primarily centralised” (Svensson-Holgund et al., 2021, p. 1), as manufacturers control access to central repair resources through authorized service networks, thereby limiting market entry by independent providers.⁸ ¹¹ ¹⁵ ²¹ ³¹ Parallel to manufacturer-dominated repair structures, independent and community-based repair formats exist outside authorized market channels. For small household appliances, repair centres and second-hand shops in particular are identified as key players in repair and reuse.¹¹⁸ In addition, there are community-based formats such as repair cafés and community repair initiatives, in which repair is organized as a collective practice and which operate largely independently of manufacturer-controlled market structures.¹⁹ ³⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁹¹

Repair and after-sales markets are also of considerable economic importance. Spare parts and after-sales services account for around eight per cent of annual economic output in the USA, while households spend around one trillion US dollars annually on goods they already own. The global maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) sector is reported to have a turnover of around 117 billion US dollars.¹²⁴ ¹²⁵ Repair activities account for around three per cent of employment in the US and around 2.4 per cent in Europe, which underlines the economic relevance of the sector and explains the keen interest of manufacturers in the regulatory outcome of R2R procedures.¹¹² ¹²⁶

Within these market structures, after-sales markets play a special role, as they generate disproportionately high margins in many industries.⁶ ⁵⁶ For durable goods such as automotive, construction, or agricultural machinery, service and spare parts businesses are often more profitable than primary sales, with products sometimes being offered below production costs in order to realise subsequent service revenues.¹²⁷ Comparable patterns can be seen in the MRO sector, where spare parts inventories in technology-intensive industries reach considerable volumes and can account for up to around five per cent of sales.¹²⁴ In the automotive sector, too, spare parts and repair services account for almost half of US car dealers’ profits, while repairs in highly closed agricultural technology systems can generate many times the value of machine sales.⁶ ⁵⁶ These developments are interpreted in the context of assetisation, where OEMs increasingly use products as platforms for recurring revenue from maintenance, repairs, upgrades, extended warranties, and data-based services.⁸

From a competitive economics perspective, repair markets feature pronounced information asymmetries. Repair services are considered credence services, as customers cannot reliably assess whether the type and scope of the repair were appropriate either before or after the service has been provided.²⁰ ¹²⁸ Superior knowledge on the part of providers increases the importance of trust and favors market structures in which transparency deficits can lead to inefficient decisions.²⁰ At the system level, information gaps along value chains act as key barriers to resource efficiency and circularity, especially when access to material, repair and diagnostic data is restricted by trade secrets or IP rights.¹¹ ⁴⁷ These information asymmetries reinforce lock-in effects when manufacturers control access to spare parts, diagnostic tools, or service information and can thus exercise market power in the aftermarket, even if the primary market is competitively organized.⁶ ³⁵ ⁵⁴ High switching costs, technical dependencies and contractual obligations mean that customers remain effectively tied to existing products and manufacturer-specific service channels, enabling manufacturers to impose supra-competitive prices.⁶ ³⁵ These effects are further reinforced by product design, exclusive contract structures, software locks, firmware updates and the strategic use of IP and trade secret protection.⁶ ⁸ ²¹ ³¹ ⁵⁴ Independent repair shops are often forced to comply with legal claims in order to avoid costly disputes, which further restricts competition.²¹ ³¹

At the systemic level, these market structures affect competition, product lifespans and sustainability. Restricted access to repair resources favors centralized aftermarket structures and stabilises manufacturer-affiliated repair markets, while market openings can increase competitive pressure and promote price and quality differentiation between repair services.⁵⁴ ¹²⁷ ¹²⁹ Longer product lifecycles and falling repair costs increase the supply of functional used products and can dampen demand for new products, with manufacturers responding strategically with price adjustments, volume strategies or modified service offerings to limit cannibalisation effects.⁶ ³² ⁷⁶

Increased repairability contributes to extending the use of capital- and energy-intensive products and reducing material and resource losses, which can reduce the need for new production, especially for durable consumer goods.⁶ ⁴⁰ ⁷¹ At the same time, labor-intensive value-added segments are emerging in the local repair and service sector, which have a higher employment intensity compared to capital-intensive new production.⁶³ ⁶⁶ Overall, it is clear that repairability is not just a matter of individual cost-benefit considerations, but structurally changes competitive structures, market organization and sustainability impacts throughout the entire product life cycle.

2.4.3 Sociocultural dimension of the right to repair

From a sociocultural perspective, repair is understood as a socially embedded practice whose exercise depends on cultural meanings, social norms, routines, knowledge bases, and collective contexts.³⁸ ⁹¹ ¹³⁰ Repair practices vary over time, socially and culturally, and their social significance has changed fundamentally in the course of industrial mass consumer societies.⁶ ³⁰ ¹³⁰ From a sociocultural perspective, the discrepancy between formally existing repair rights and their actual use points to the importance of social normalisation, learned routines, and the symbolic legitimacy of repair practices.⁴ ¹² ³⁸ ¹³⁰ Repair is more likely to be practiced when it is culturally understood as a meaningful, legitimate, and manageable activity and is linked to normative interpretations such as care, responsibility, and community action.³⁸ ¹³¹ Against this backdrop, this chapter analyzes R2R as part of cultural patterns of interpretation and social practices that normalise or marginalise repair.⁹¹ ⁹⁵

2.4.3.1 Consumption practices, routines and habitus

Repair should be understood less as a one-off decision and more as a component or deviation from established consumption practices that have developed historically and are reflected in routines, expectations, and self-evident ways of dealing with objects.¹⁹ ¹³⁰ These practices structure how defects are perceived, evaluated, and dealt with, and thus shape whether repair appears to be an obvious or an unusual course of action.¹⁹ ³⁰ ¹³²

Repair has largely lost its status as the dominant routine for dealing with defective consumer goods (in affluent mass consumption societies), while replacement is increasingly seen as the obvious and more common response.³⁰ ¹³⁰ Repair, reuse, and recycling practices have not disappeared, but the way they are taken for granted has changed.¹⁹ ³⁰ They increasingly appear to be conscious, selective actions, often limited to a few objects that are perceived as personally or symbolically significant.¹⁹ ¹³⁰ Time constraints, convenience considerations, and the desire for rapid availability have a significant influence on repair decisions.²⁰ Repair is often associated with waiting times, uncertainties, and increased coordination efforts, and requires users to actively engage with the object.¹¹ ²⁰ These established routines, in which replacement is often considered the obvious response, are not solely based on economic reasons, but are an expression of internalised expectations about how consumption should function in everyday life.¹³⁰ Differences in dealing with defects can be understood as an expression of different forms of habitus that arise from education, social environment, biographical experiences, and cultural influences.¹³⁰ Repair practices are not merely individually learned skills, but socially embedded practices that develop from recurring routines and shared meanings and are stabilised in certain contexts through intergenerational transmission and collaborative learning processes.³⁸ ¹³⁰ The transfer of material equipment is no longer automatically accompanied by the reproduction of repair routines, which points to a cultural decoupling of resources and practiced repair activities.¹³⁰ Legal approaches to R2R thus encounter everyday and usage contexts in which repair is not systematically anchored. This limits the practical uptake of corresponding rights without calling into question their legal existence.⁴

Repair decisions should also be understood as an expression of culturally influenced perceptions and attributions of meaning.⁹⁵ ¹³⁰ Consumers do not evaluate repair solely on functional grounds, but also associate it with notions of autonomy, control, and agency.²¹ ²⁸ ⁹¹ Particularly in DIY and community contexts, repair is associated with attributions of competence and forms of subjective self-efficacy.⁹¹ ⁹⁵

2.4.3.2 Social norms, patterns of interpretation and relationships with technical objects

Building on these everyday practical routines, the following section focuses on the role of social norms, collective patterns of interpretation, and social relationships that structure repair decisions beyond individual preferences. Repair intentions are largely guided by subjective norms, perceived expectations of the social environment, and social image effects.¹² Environmental beliefs alone do not prove to be decisive drivers; rather, repair is more likely to be considered where it is socially compatible and normatively accepted.¹² The bibliometric analysis by Logeswari and Kannan (2025) identifies cultural factors and peer groups as recurring thematic clusters within the R2R literature, thus underlining the classification of repair as a socially embedded practice rather than a purely individual decision.² However, how repair is evaluated depends on the context. Depending on the social environment, it can be seen as an expression of competence, responsibility, or self-efficacy, or it can appear as an impractical, marginal practice that deviates from dominant consumer norms.³⁸ ⁹¹ ⁹⁵

These assessments are closely linked to the perception of technical objects. Whether defects are interpreted as repairable malfunctions or as triggers for replacement actions is influenced by the perception of technical products as black boxes whose functioning is hardly comprehensible to end users.¹¹ ⁹¹ ¹³⁰ This perception does not primarily reduce repairability, but rather the subjectively attributed competence of users to take action. Repair thus appears to be socially delegated and outsourced from everyday use, which makes its normalisation even more difficult.²¹ ⁹¹

Emotional attachments between users and objects, which can arise from long-term use, biographical significance, or everyday routines, can encourage repair decisions, but these depend on product categories, service life, and innovation cycles.¹¹ ¹² ⁴⁹ ¹³⁰ Such bonds can lead to objects being repaired despite economic disadvantages.¹³⁰ ¹³³ In fast-paced consumption and innovation contexts, there is often insufficient time to build stable bonds, so that rational assessments of the repair effort become more important and repair is further marginalised.¹²

2.4.3.3 Repair communities as spaces for social learning and negotiation

Following on from these individual perception and assessment processes, repair communities, especially Repair Cafés, can be understood as social spaces in which repair is organized collectively.³⁸ ⁴⁹ ⁹³ Here, repair takes place as a communal process based on the sharing of time, knowledge, tools, and experience, and is deliberately organized outside of market-based exchange relationships.³⁸ ⁹¹ Voluntary organization and the conscious renunciation of monetary remuneration promote forms of social belonging and prosocial interaction that differ from commercial repair settings.³⁸ ⁴⁹ Repair thus becomes a socially embedded practice that strengthens relationships between people as well as relationships with things.⁴⁹ This gives repair meanings that go beyond the mere restoration of functionality by revealing alternative ideas of use, time, and responsibility.¹⁹ ³⁸ ⁹⁵ At the same time, repair in these communities is often framed in moral terms, without fundamentally overturning consumerist logic.³⁸ ⁹⁵

In addition to their material effects, repair communities have a pronounced social and educational dimension, as they serve as places of learning for practical skills, problem-solving abilities, and technical self-confidence.⁴⁹ ¹³⁴ Repair is not only carried out here, but also explained, accompanied, and reflected on together, creating informal learning processes that promote repair-related knowledge, practical skills, and self-efficacy.⁴⁹ These learning processes counteract the loss of craft and technical skills and are stabilised through communal sharing.¹³⁴

At the same time, repair communities can be understood as places where social values are negotiated and where alternative ideas about work, expertise, and performance are made visible.⁹⁵ Manual skills and care work are often experienced here as meaningful and valuable, even if they fall outside the logic of market-based recognition.⁹⁵ At the same time, there is a danger that repair practices will be romanticised or selectively presented as morally superior, thereby reproducing existing social inequalities, for example in terms of gender or social status.⁹⁵

From a convivialist perspective, repair in these contexts is understood as a relational practice that encompasses social relationships and the relationship between people, things, and the environment.⁹¹ Repair communities favor cooperative forms of action in which individual contributions are embedded in collective processes and dominant individualised consumption logics are relativised in specific situations.⁹¹

Overall, repair communities thus function as social spaces beyond market and state control, in which knowledge, skills, and social support are pooled that would otherwise be only accessible to a limited extent to many users without such collective learning and exchange contexts.³⁸ ⁴⁹ ¹³⁴ Thus, repair communities contribute to enabling repair-related practices, which help explain the practical use of R2R.

2.4.3.4 Sociocultural inequalities and barriers

However, access to repair options is unevenly distributed, as repair knowledge, technical skills, and experience-based routines are not equally anchored in society.⁵ ¹¹ Repairability alone is not a sufficient prerequisite for repair practices if knowledge, self-confidence, or social support are lacking.⁵ Community repair formats can lower knowledge and skill barriers, but remain selectively accessible and do not reach all population groups equally.³⁸ ¹³⁴ Participation in repair cafés or makerspaces is linked to time and space resources as well as cultural compatibility with the forms of repair practiced there, which structurally favors certain user groups.³⁸ ¹³⁴ Sociocultural barriers also manifest themselves in the social framing of repair, which is often associated with certain milieus, lifestyles, or value orientations, thus appearing socially incompatible for other groups.⁹⁵ This framing carries the risk of implicit exclusion, as it emphasizes individual responsibility while at the same time setting implicit expectations in terms of time, knowledge, and cultural resources, which can unintentionally reproduce existing inequalities.⁹⁵ Against this background, the use of R2R can be explained less by its formal design than by the cultural and social conditions for its use.⁴ Analytically, this reveals that groups with existing skills and support structures benefit in particular.⁵ ¹³⁴

Overall, the sociocultural perspective makes it clear that R2R does not automatically reduce inequalities and can reproduce them under conditions of unequal distribution of skills and access.³⁸ ⁹⁵ Repair thus proves to be a practice with many social prerequisites, the spread of which depends on more than legal or technical possibilities alone.⁴ ¹¹

2.4.4 Technological dimension of the right to repair

The technological perspective on R2R focuses on the material and digital system structures that determine whether and to what extent technical interventions on products are possible during the usage phase.¹³⁵ Repairability is not understood as a downstream usage property, but as the result of design and architectural decisions that are already made in the development and design process of technical systems and shape the technical scope for action throughout the product life cycle.⁹ From this perspective, it follows that repairability cannot be derived in isolation from individual components or defects, but must always be analyzed in the context of the overall structure of technical systems, in which physical construction, accessibility, and information availability interact.⁹ ¹⁰

2.4.4.1 Product architecture and design as determinants of repairability

From a technological perspective, repairability describes a system-specific condition that determines whether defects can be identified, located, and repaired. The decisive factor here is not the occurrence of individual defects, but the structural design of the technical system in which they occur. Technical systems therefore differ in the extent to which interventions during the usage phase are technically possible or rendered more difficult through design decisions.⁹ ¹³⁵

A key influencing factor is the product architecture. Repair-friendly systems often feature modular structures in which functionally distinct and physically separable components are individually accessible, replaceable or repairable. Such architectures enable targeted interventions, as individual components can be worked on without extensive dismantling of the entire system and repairs are limited to clearly defined system elements.¹⁰ ¹³ Repairability in these systems results from a combination of accessibility, functional decoupling of components, and, especially in standardised designs, compatible interfaces that facilitate the replacement of individual parts and reduce the complexity of repair interventions.¹⁰ ¹⁴

In contrast, integrated or monolithic system architectures make repairs more difficult, as several functions are combined in non-separable assemblies. In such systems, the replacement of individual components often requires the dismantling of additional system parts, which makes repair interventions more technically complex and reduces their probability of success.¹³⁵ Under these conditions, repairability is not a property of individual components, but of the overall architecture of a technical system, in which the separability, accessibility, and functional decoupling of components are defined.⁹ ¹⁰

2.4.4.2 Repair in software-dependent and networked technical systems

While repairability in physically configured systems is primarily determined by product architecture, separability, and accessibility, the relevant technical conditions in digitalised and networked systems increasingly shift to software and system-related levels.

With the increasing digitalisation of technical products, repair is increasingly influenced by software-related system layers, especially in electronic and networked devices. In such systems, repair is no longer limited to mechanical interventions, but also includes the handling of embedded software, diagnostic functions, and system configurations.⁴ ¹³⁵ In software-intensive systems, the functionality of physical components is often linked to digital control and authorization layers that enable, configure or restrict the operation of individual components.⁶

Under these conditions, repair requires not only the replacement or servicing of physical parts, but also access to software-based initialisation, diagnostic, and configuration mechanisms. Without such access, the functionality of a device cannot be fully restored despite successful physical intervention.⁶ ¹³⁵ The failure or discontinuation of software support can also render physically intact devices inoperable, creating a technical endpoint of usability that occurs independently of the physical condition of the product.⁶

These dependencies intensify in the context of connected products. In internet-enabled systems, functionality is often distributed across multiple technical layers, including local hardware, embedded software, data structures, and external backend infrastructures. Under these conditions, repair concerns not only individual components, but also the restoration of functionality within a distributed technical system.⁴ The failure or unavailability of external system components can result in repaired devices becoming unusable or usable only to a limited extent, even if the physical repair was successful.⁴

In digitised and networked systems, repairability is therefore not solely a question of physical accessibility, but rather an expression of the technical embedding of products in ongoing processes of software maintenance, system maintenance, and digital system integration. Under these conditions, repair shifts from an isolated technical action to a procedural process that is linked to the continued functionality of digital system environments.⁹ ¹⁰

2.4.5 Ecological dimension of the right to repair

The ecological dimension of R2R analyzes the conditions under which repair practices and repair-promoting framework conditions can contribute to a reduction in environmental impacts and the constellations in which their environmental effects remain limited or ambivalent. Unlike the theoretical framework for CE and sufficiency developed in Chapter 2.3, this subchapter does not aim to provide a normative justification for repair as a sustainability strategy, but rather to offer an analytical assessment of its environmental effects from a life cycle, usage, and system perspective.

2.4.5.1 Ecological mechanisms and limitations of repair

In life cycle-oriented analyzes, repair is classified as a form of service life extension whose ecological impact depends on whether it contributes to the avoidance or postponement of new production in the usage system. Repair can generate environmental mitigation effects by delaying or avoiding resource- and emission-intensive production processes and keeping existing products in the usage system with comparatively low additional material and energy inputs. Environmental benefits arise in particular when additional production processes are avoided.⁶³ ⁶⁷ However, whether and to what extent such environmental mitigation effects occur depends on the respective product characteristics and usage patterns. The ratio between avoided new production and additional environmental impacts during extended use, together with product-specific characteristics, is of particular importance.⁴³ ⁶³

A key environmental benefit of repair lies in the reduction of primary raw material requirements and the environmental impacts associated with raw material extraction, material processing and industrial manufacturing. A significant proportion of the cumulative environmental impacts of many consumer goods is attributable to upstream production and material phases, meaning that extending the service life of products has the potential to reduce these impacts.⁶³ ⁶⁷ The actual extent of this potential is determined by specific factors, such as the material composition of the product, the scope of the repair work and the remaining service life compared to a functionally equivalent new product.⁴³ ⁶⁷

The ecological assessment of repair is also significantly determined by the importance of the use phase in the overall product life cycle. Environmental benefits from extending the service life only occur if the avoided environmental impacts from raw material extraction, material processing and industrial manufacturing are not offset or outweighed by additional impacts during the extended use.⁶³ ⁶⁷ For product groups whose environmental impacts are primarily characterised by energy consumption during the use phase, the continued use of older, less efficient devices can lead to potential savings from avoided new production being partially or completely neutralised. When the use phase is taken into account, the environmental advantage can even be reversed if efficiency differences between product generations are considered.⁴³ ⁶³ In contrast, repair has a higher reduction potential for material- and resource-intensive products that are also comparatively low in energy consumption, provided that no significant additional environmental impacts occur during the extended use phase.⁴³ ⁶⁷

Beyond these product-related mechanisms, repair, reuse and other value retention processes are embedded in market-based and demand-driven systems. Value retention processes can be classified as forms of secondary production whose ecological impact depends on the extent to which they actually substitute primary production or induce additional use and production through price and demand effects.¹³⁶ Under these conditions, efficiency gains from repair and reuse do not necessarily translate into proportional reductions in primary production. Instead, they may stabilise or even expand existing production volumes, thereby limiting or partially offsetting environmental mitigation effects.¹³⁶

Overall, the ecological potential of repair does not result from repair per se, but from the interaction of avoided production impacts, usage-related additional impacts, and systemic substitution and rebound effects. A universal prioritization of repair over replacement cannot be derived from this; rather, ecological assessment requires a context- and product-specific analysis along the entire product life cycle.⁴³ ⁶⁷ ¹³⁶ In individual product categories with particularly high environmental impacts on the production side, repair can have a comparatively high reduction potential under favorable usage conditions.⁴³ ⁶³

2.4.5.2 Repair in the context of the circular economy

Within the CE, repair is classified as a value-preserving measure that maintains existing material and energy inputs in the usage system and thus takes effect at early stages of the product life cycle.⁶³ ⁶⁷ From an ecological perspective, repair can contribute to reducing resource extraction and production-related emissions, provided that it helps to avoid additional new production.⁶⁷ At the same time, repair can be part of growth-oriented forms of CE, whose environmental effects remain ambivalent. Company-driven exchange and replacement programs can go hand in hand with increased replacement frequencies and thus undermine absolute resource savings, even though they formally comply with circular economy principles.⁴³ Comparable conflicts of interest can be seen in trade-in logic and product-service-oriented business models, in which repair does not primarily act as a substitute for new production, but as part of an extended consumption and replacement cycle.⁶⁹ ⁹⁵ ¹³⁷

Against this backdrop, repair does not guarantee an absolute reduction in environmental impact. Although it can contribute to reducing resource and emission intensities, its ecological impact remains limited if it is not accompanied by a reduction in new production, replacement frequencies and overall demand.⁶⁹ ¹³⁶ ¹³⁷ Repair should therefore be understood as a necessary but not sufficient condition for reducing environmental impacts, as its overall impact depends on product-, usage-, and system-related factors.⁴³ ⁶⁷

2.4.6 Legal dimension of the right to repair

Legal research does not regard repair as a separate legal issue, but rather as a cross-cutting legal matter spanning intellectual property law, contract and consumer law, competition law, and increasingly environmental and sustainability regulation.⁴ ²¹ ¹³⁸ This fragmentation means that repair remains formally permissible, but is effectively restricted by the cumulative effect of several areas of legal regulation.⁵⁴ ⁵⁶ While repair was historically considered a natural consequence of property acquisition, it is increasingly treated as an exception in today’s regulatory frameworks.³⁶ ¹³⁸ The legal conflict does not relate to the act of repair itself, but to access to key repair requirements, in particular spare parts, repair information, software and the ability of independent repair shops to offer these services.²¹ ⁵⁴ Repair is thus framed as a practice regulated across multiple legal domains, the actual exercise of which depends on how different areas of legal regulation are interlinked without being coherently aligned.¹¹² Accordingly, R2R appears less as clearly codified law than as a regulatory reform project that addresses existing power asymmetries between manufacturers, consumers and independent repairers.⁴ ⁵⁶

Dogmatically, R2R ties in with established principles of property and competition, in particular the exhaustion doctrine, whose scope is increasingly controversial in the context of digitised and contractually structured products.²¹ ¹³⁸ Against this backdrop, modern R2R laws are not understood as establishing new individual rights, but rather as a response to structural shifts in the relationship between ownership, control and market participation.²¹ ³¹ ³⁵ ¹¹² ¹³⁸

2.4.6.1 Ownership, licensing and post-sale control in digitalised products

Once a product has been placed on the market, the exhaustion doctrine fundamentally limits the rights holder’s powers of control over its further use, including certain repair activities, and historically serves to limit ongoing control over sold products.²¹ ¹³⁸ However, the practical effectiveness of this principle is constrained by copyright, design and contract law instruments that allow for continued control over use, repair and spare parts.²¹ ³¹

The increasing penetration of software in products is shifting repairs into legal areas that enable post-sale control and is leading to a structural decoupling of formal ownership of the physical product and continued control by manufacturers over its use after sale, in particular through licensing models, software-based lock-in and contractual restrictions on use.³¹ ³⁶ ³⁷ ¹³⁸ In the case of software-based products in particular, hybrid goods are constructed in which the hardware is sold, but the functionally relevant software is only licensed,⁴³⁶³⁷ so that the exhaustion doctrine applies to the hardware, but not to licensed software components that may be necessary for diagnosis, calibration or recommissioning.²¹ ¹³⁸ Thus, ownership in the context of digitalised products is increasingly to be understood in relational terms, as use, maintenance and repair are permanently embedded in software, update and service structures.⁴ ⁵⁹

Post-sale control operates in an ownership-like manner without carrying the legal obligations of actual ownership.³¹ ¹³⁸ It manifests itself both through formal license agreements and through technical measures that link repair activities to authorized software, digital keys or server-side activations.⁴ ³¹ TPMs can not only prevent unauthorised repairs, but also block or condition renewed access to the product after a repair.³¹ Repair is thus legally and technically transformed into an action subject to authorization, the legitimacy of which does not derive from ownership of the product, but from the continued consent of the manufacturer.³¹ ⁵⁶

Contractual provisions take on an independent control function by pre-structuring repair options at the level of product purchase or use (private ordering).²¹ ³⁷ In contrast to intellectual property rights, such restrictions do not take effect through legally granted exclusive rights, but through individualised terms of use and license terms that limit the legal scope of action of consumers and repairers.²¹ ³⁶ Manufacturers use license models, service and usage conditions to regulate repair activities contractually, for example by prohibiting third-party providers, restricting reverse engineering or conditioning updates and diagnostic functions, especially for software-based or networked products.⁴ ²¹ ³¹ ³⁶ ⁵⁶ This practice represents a structural shift in classic property law assumptions, as control over use and repair no longer primarily follows from ownership, but from ongoing contractual and licensing relationships.³¹ ¹³⁸ While the historical function of the exhaustion doctrine was precisely to limit ongoing control over sold products and protect markets from downstream restrictions on use,¹³⁹ this protective function is partially limited by licensing structures and contractual design options.³⁶ ³⁷

These forms of post-sale control can be observed across sectors, for example in agriculture, consumer electronics, the automotive sector and in networked or IoT-based products.⁴ ⁵⁶ They are repeatedly characterised as a competition concern, as they can structurally hinder not only repairs, but also secondary markets, reuse and life extension.³² ⁵⁴ Existing R2R regulations have so far only addressed this contractual dimension to a limited extent, as they primarily focus on information and access rights, while private law restrictions largely remain in place.⁵³ ⁵⁴ ¹¹²

2.4.6.2 Warranty and liability as mechanisms of repair risk allocation

Warranty and liability issues are considered key mechanisms that do not directly prohibit repairs, but rather frame them as a legally risky practice, thereby structurally directing consumers towards authorized repair channels.²¹ ⁵⁴ Warranty conditions are sometimes tied to the use of authorized repair channels, while at the same time independent or self-performed repairs are linked to a possible loss of warranty. Thus, warranty acts not only as a claims-based entitlement framework, but also as a legal framework that influences repair decisions and can effectively make independent repairs more difficult.¹¹ ⁵⁴ ¹¹² In this context, legal risks appear less as objective barriers and more as argumentative instruments used to delegitimise repairs and limit them to authorized actors.⁴ ³¹

Independent or self-performed repairs are often associated with the risk of losing the warranty.⁴⁹ ⁵⁴ Consumers often perceive the threat of losing their warranty as a decisive argument against repair, even if the legal basis for a complete exclusion is not clear.¹¹ ⁵⁴ Even hints of a possible loss of warranty can have a deterrent effect on repair decisions, regardless of whether specific warranty claims would actually be affected.⁵⁴ Warranties thus function less as legally precise regulations governing claims and more as communicative control instruments that construct repairs as a potentially self-inflicted risk.⁵⁴ Warranty regimes regularly provide for repair or replacement by the manufacturer or authorized service providers; independent repairs are not part of this warranty process.⁵⁴ ¹¹² In the European context in particular, repair is described as an area of tension between statutory consumer rights and manufacturer warranty and repair systems, with repairs by third parties often being framed as an interference with product integrity.⁴ ¹¹² This framing shifts the responsibility for malfunctions from product design to the behavior of users or independent repairers.⁴

In addition to warranties, liability serves as a key argument for legally and politically legitimizing repair restrictions.³² ³¹ Unauthorised repairs are presented as a safety risk that could lead to an extension of manufacturer product liability.⁴ ³¹ These liability arguments are classified as generalisations, as they often fail to differentiate between damage resulting from improper repair, design flaws or normal wear and tear.⁵⁴ ⁵⁶ In the context of repairs, liability thus appears not only as a risk distribution instrument, but also as a legitimization framework for limiting independent repairs.⁴ ²¹ In the context of digitalised and networked products, liability is also linked to cybersecurity and data protection risks,⁴ thereby integrating security law arguments into repair debates. This debate is explored in more depth in section 2.4.6.5. At the same time, it should be noted that liability risks do not necessarily arise from repair activities themselves, but often result from proprietary system architectures, restricted access to repair information and a lack of transparency.⁴⁹ ⁵⁴

Overall, it is clear that warranty and liability regulations in the R2R context not only fulfil protective functions, but in their specific form can also contribute to making independent repair more difficult and favoring authorized repair models.¹¹ ³² ²¹ ³¹ ⁵⁴

2.4.6.3 Intellectual property as a mechanism of aftermarket control

In the context of R2R, intellectual property law is described as one of the central legal levers that manufacturers can use to limit repair options without explicitly prohibiting repair.²¹ ⁵⁶ ¹³⁸ Repair conflicts cannot be attributed primarily to a single property right, but arise from the interaction of several intellectual property instruments that together regulate access to spare parts, software and repair information.³⁷ ⁵⁴

In principle, the exhaustion doctrine in patent law protects permissible repair activities and distinguishes them from impermissible reconstruction by limiting the patent holder’s control rights after a product has been placed on the market for the first time.³⁵ ¹³⁸ However, this protective effect becomes limited once individual components or spare parts themselves are patented, protected by design rights or secured by trademark rights, which places repair in a legally ambiguous boundary area between permissible repair and impermissible reconstruction.²¹ ³¹ ⁵⁶ This legal ambiguity often has a preventive effect, as independent repairers are hardly able to bear the associated legal risks.¹¹ ⁵⁴ In the field of product and spare parts design, intellectual property rights can thus contribute to controlling the aftermarket, even if spare parts are functionally necessary to restore the original product performance.³⁵ ⁵⁶

In copyright law, this legal uncertainty is exacerbated by the increasing software dependency of physical products, as repair activities for digitised and networked goods are often linked to access to copyright-protected software, firmware or diagnostic codes.⁴ ³¹ Anti-circumvention regulations such as Section 1201 of the DMCA (Circumvention of copyright protection systems) can block this access even if no copyright-relevant use in the narrower sense is intended and repair would be technically necessary.²¹ ⁵⁴ Although there are temporary exemptions for repairs, these only mitigate the structural barrier to a limited extent, as they are narrow in scope, temporary in nature and often restricted to end users, while independent repair shops remain excluded.²¹ ⁵³

In addition, trade secret protection is described as a tool for repair control, as manufacturers can classify repair information, circuit diagrams or diagnostic software as secrets worthy of protection, even though authorized repair channels are granted access.²¹ ³⁷ Existing R2R regulations have so far only addressed this issue to a limited extent, as they regularly provide for exceptions for trade secrets, thereby perpetuating legal ambiguities and room for interpretation.⁵⁴ ¹¹²

In the R2R context, intellectual property law, when applied cumulatively, has a controlling effect on repair and aftermarkets by securing existing market positions, creating uncertainty around repair and marginalising it as a competitive alternative.³² ²⁸ As a result, the repair issue is shifting to a structural debate about access, knowledge and market participation in the aftermarket.⁴ ²¹

2.4.6.4 Competition and consumer law in repair aftermarkets

Competition and consumer law are classified as central, but so far only partially utilised, legal approaches to curbing manufacturer control over repairs and strengthening independent repair markets.²¹ ²⁶ ²⁸ ⁵⁴ From a competition law perspective, the structure of repair markets as aftermarkets is particularly relevant, as manufacturers can transfer market power from the primary market to spare parts, repair services, software and diagnostic interfaces.²¹ ³⁵ ⁵⁶

US aftermarket case law, in particular the Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services decision, has recognised that control over repair information and spare parts can lead to foreclosure of downstream markets, even if the primary market is competitive, especially in cases of information asymmetries regarding subsequent manufacturer lock-in at the time of purchase.²¹ ³⁵ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁶ The resulting market power does not arise solely from property or intellectual property rights, but from the interaction of contractual terms, technical access restrictions and persistent information asymmetries.²¹ ³⁷ ⁵⁴ This structure is classified as problematic from a competition perspective, as it can lead to increased repair prices, replacement purchases and limited choice.³² ²⁶ ³⁵ ⁵⁴ Antitrust enforcement in the repair context is predominantly ex post and case-specific and therefore has only a limited preventive effect. Many restrictions relevant to repairs have an effect on competition but do not meet the legal requirements for an abuse of market power under antitrust law.³⁵ ⁵⁶ ¹³⁸

From a consumer law perspective, repair is primarily viewed as a problem of information and autonomy asymmetries. Freedom to repair is generally classified as a consumer interest worthy of protection, but remains effectively restricted when legal information is unclear, terms of use are complex, or deterrent mechanisms are effective.⁵ ¹² ²⁶ ²⁸ ⁴⁹ Misleading information about loss of warranty, liability or breach of contract influences repair decisions without necessarily being based on sound legal grounds.²⁸ ⁵⁴ As a result, repairs are often not carried out, even though they are not legally prohibited, because risks are overestimated or cannot be reliably assessed.⁵ ¹² ²⁶ In the US context, the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act is cited as an example of the limited effectiveness of consumer law instruments, as despite regulating certain warranty practices, it remains primarily focused on individual information and enforcement rights and has not yet brought about any structural opening of repair markets.⁵⁴ ¹³⁹ Consumer law thus appears to be a potential but structurally limited lever for promoting transparency, clarifying rights of use and regulating fair information practices throughout the product life cycle.²⁸ ⁵⁴ ¹¹² Existing instruments remain predominantly indirect, for example through warranty, information or product safety rules, without codifying repair as an independent consumer right.⁴ ²⁶ ¹¹²

In the interplay between competition and consumer law, these aspects combine to create a structural enforcement deficit, as repair restrictions often have competitive or behavior-shaping effects without fulfilling the conditions for intervention under antitrust or consumer protection law.²¹ ³⁵ ⁵⁴ Repair thus remains largely individualised and negotiated on a market basis,²¹⁴⁹⁹¹ while the regulatory potential of both areas of law to limit aftermarket power and strengthen informed repair decisions has so far been insufficiently exploited.²⁶ ²⁸ ⁵⁴

Against this backdrop, repair is increasingly being addressed at the legislative and regulatory level in various legal systems, albeit with different political objectives and institutional rationales.¹ ⁶ A detailed analysis of the political origins, institutional design and scope of these instruments, as well as a comparison between EU and US approaches, can be found in chapters 2.2 and 2.4.1. The firm-level strategic implications of legislative reforms are explored in greater depth in chapter 3.2.1.2.4.

2.4.6.5 Cybersecurity and data protection as justifications and legal limits of repair

The socio-technical relationships between repair, software dependency, digital access restrictions, cybersecurity and distributed system architectures are analyzed in Chapter 2.4.4.2, while software-based control mechanisms and digital locks are discussed in Chapter 2.4.4.1. This section therefore focuses on the legal treatment of cybersecurity and data protection in the context of R2R.

Cybersecurity and data protection risks are regularly cited in the context of R2R as key justifications for restricting repair options, especially for networked and software-dependent products.⁴ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁹ Manufacturers argue that access by independent repairers to hardware and software, firmware or diagnostic interfaces could compromise the integrity of safety-critical systems, facilitate unauthorised interference with them or increase risks to personal data.⁴ ⁵⁶ Repair is framed in this context as access relevant to security and data protection.⁴ However, these arguments are often used in a generalised manner. The FTC’s Nixing the Fix report (2021) documents that security and privacy concerns are repeatedly used in the US context to restrict access to repair information, software tools or technical interfaces without providing reliable empirical evidence of systematic abuse or security risk.⁵⁴

At the same time, existing data protection regimes do not fundamentally preclude repairability. Data protection principles such as transparency, purpose limitation and user control (control over personal data) are instead aimed at limiting asymmetrical power relations between manufacturers and users.⁴ In particular, rights to information, control and, in certain cases, data portability strengthen the position of users vis-à-vis data processing systems and prevent the blanket restriction of technical and informational access.⁴ In the context of R2R, cybersecurity arguments are used both as justification for repair restrictions and are analyzed legally to the effect that they cannot be used across the board to oppose repairability.⁴ ⁵⁴ ⁵⁹

The literature review has shown that R2R is not a singular regulatory measure, but rather a structural regulatory field at the intersection of CE approaches, growth-critical perspectives and sufficiency strategies. Across political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal dimensions, R2R influences the institutional, market and design conditions under which product life cycles are organized and value creation structures are designed. The visualisation developed by Svensson et al. (2018) (Figure 4) condenses this area of tension by schematically depicting the diverging interests between manufacturer control (“closed access”) and open market access (“open access”) as well as the associated conflicts of interest between OEMs, consumers, independent repairers, environmental and political interests.¹ This theoretical synthesis provides the analytical basis for systematically examining the strategic implications for companies and their options for response and positioning within repair-oriented institutional frameworks.

Figure 4: The R2R positioned along the open-closed access spectrum, reflecting stakeholder interests and regulatory trade-offs (own illustration by N. Jurado van Bürck based on Svensson et al. (2018)¹)

3 Practical implementation

While the previous chapters analyzed the conceptual foundations and the institutional and control-related dimensions of R2R, this chapter focuses on its practical implementation in a corporate context. For manufacturing companies, R2R represents a regulatory and institutional framework that entails firm-level adaptation decisions in product design, information management, after-sales structures and internal governance throughout the product life cycle. The aim of this chapter is to develop a process-oriented implementation logic as an analytical framework for translating external R2R-related requirements into internal decision-making structures and operational practices. Building on this, the central drivers and barriers to the implementation of repairability by companies are systematised and analyzed in relation to the developed process logic.

3.1 Firm-level process logic for implementing right to repair requirements

The practical implementation of R2R-related requirements entails the systematic structuring of decision-making and implementation processes. The focus here is on embedding repairability across core organisational functions such as product development, information provision, after-sales organization and internal governance throughout the entire product life cycle. Against this background, the chapter develops a conceptual, process-oriented implementation logic that can be used to systematically analyze and design internal company decision-making and implementation processes in the context of R2R.

The process logic developed below is formulated as a meta-process, as a uniform and detailed process description has limited transferability given the heterogeneity of repair-relevant product groups. The scope and depth of openness, for example in terms of design, software access or spare parts provision, depend on firm-specific boundary-setting, risk and security decisions, particularly with regard to the type, scope and recipients of access, information and repair rights. The logic is designed as an iterative, process-oriented approach that understands repairability as an organisational capability subject to recurring review and adjustment. The basic structure of this iterative process logic, framed as Assessment and Decision-Making Foundations, Governance and Boundary Decisions, Design and Operational Implementation, and Monitoring and Iterative Adjustment, is summarised in Figure 5.

3.1.1 Implementation steps

The first step is to conduct a systematic assessment of existing products, processes and repair practices in the company. The aim of this assessment is to identify repair-critical components, interfaces and usage patterns that repeatedly lead to defects, repairs or premature replacement. To this end, firms draw on data from repair cases, returns, warranty claims and complaint and service management, which provides insight into structural weaknesses in product architecture, material selection or software design.¹⁰ ⁷⁶ The combination of technical, service-related and usage-based information makes it possible to evaluate repairability in the context of existing development and organisational decisions.⁶⁶

Based on this assessment, firms take governance and boundary decisions that define the framework for opening up repair access. This step determines which elements of a product, such as spare parts, repair information, diagnostic functions, or software access, are provided and where deliberate restrictions remain in place. These decisions particularly concern the allocation of access rights to different actor groups, including end users, independent repair shops, or authorized service partners. Liability-, safety-, and intellectual-property-related considerations must be taken into account when designing access and information rights, as they can limit the scope of practical repair access (especially for software-enabled and safety-critical products).⁶ ⁴⁵

In the next step, the boundary decisions are translated into concrete design and access structures. Product architecture and design decisions have a significant influence on whether repairs are technically feasible and organisationally scalable.¹⁰ ⁶⁶ Modularity, standardised connecting elements, an accessible design and the avoidance of unnecessary bonding or proprietary locking mechanisms facilitate repairs and reduce their complexity.¹⁰ ⁷¹ In addition, this step includes the design of access to spare parts, tools, diagnostic software and repair information, as limited availability, high prices or a lack of information make repairs difficult or impossible.¹⁰ ⁴⁷

Finally, expanding repair access is implemented by integrating repairability into existing after-sales, service and logistics structures. This includes, in particular, the organization of long-term spare parts availability, transparent pricing and the coordination of information and material flows between manufacturers, service units and external repair providers.¹ ¹⁰ Repair is thereby treated as a regular part of the product life cycle and anchored organisationally in such a way that it can be implemented as a repeatable process rather than an exception.⁶⁶

3.1.2 Monitoring and iterative adjustment

Implementing repairability requires the ongoing review of prior governance and boundary decisions as well as design and operational implementation choices. Monitoring primarily includes the systematic recording of repair-related key figures such as repair rates, spare parts availability, repeat repairs or service-related feedback, as these indicators provide insight into the practical usability and effectiveness of implemented repair measures.⁴⁷ ⁷⁶ The collection of such key figures makes it possible to treat repairability not only conceptually, but also as an operationally manageable variable within existing product and service processes.⁶⁶ Monitoring also fulfills a feedback function in upstream process steps. Insights from repair and service data can be fed back into product-related design and access decisions, triggering adjustments to the product architecture and the design of components and information access.⁶⁶ ⁷¹ Repairability is thus anchored as a learning-oriented process that develops iteratively under changing technical, organisational and market conditions.¹⁰

At the same time, firms’ efforts to expand repair access can be limited by safety and liability-related requirements as well as by regulatory and software-related access restrictions.⁶ ⁴⁵ ⁴⁶ ¹⁴⁰ These limits define the range of feasible decisions within which openness, control and risk protection must be balanced without fundamentally excluding repairs.⁶ ³¹ The process logic developed thus serves as an analytical lens for classifying the drivers and barriers identified in Chapter 3.2 not in isolation, but as process-related influencing factors in internal corporate decision-making and implementation logic.

Figure 5: Iterative firm-level process logic for embedding repairability within the R2R context across the product lifecycle (own illustration by N. Jurado van Bürck)

3.2 Drivers and barriers to implementing right to repair measures at firm-level

As shown in Chapter 2, repair is not a purely technical activity, but rather a practice structured by political, legal, economic, technological, socio-cultural and ecological conditions. At firm-level, these conditions translate into concrete decision-making and implementation contexts across the product life cycle, for example in product design, business model design, aftermarket organization, and service processes. R2R becomes operationally relevant where regulatory requirements, market logics, technological system architectures, internal governance mechanisms, and external expectations shape the scope for entrepreneurial action. Drivers and barriers can therefore be understood as the outcome of interactions among these factors. Certain constellations can make repair strategically attractive, while others act as barriers when they affect existing revenue logics, market positions, control mechanisms, or organisational routines and increase adaptation costs or risks.

Building on the perspectives developed in Chapter 3, this chapter systematises these influence constellations from a corporate perspective into drivers (3.2.1) and barriers (3.2.2) and classifies them along market- and business model-related, regulatory-strategic, technological-organisational, organisational and social-normative dimensions.

3.2.1 Drivers in the right to repair context

This chapter analyzes the key corporate drivers in the R2R context and identifies repairability as a strategically relevant decision-making dimension in product design, business model design and aftermarket management. Drivers are understood as incentive and benefit constellations under which repairability contributes to securing life cycle-related value creation, reducing cost and liability risks, or achieving competitive differentiation from a corporate perspective. Selected cross-industry practical examples are used for illustration purposes. The analysis is structured along market- and business model-related, regulatory-strategic, technological-organisational, reputation-related and systemic dimensions.

3.2.1.1 Market and business model drivers

For manufacturers, market- and business-model-related drivers arise when repair becomes a relevant option for generating additional value creation across the product life cycle, especially when linear product sales models are insufficient to secure value creation over the life cycle. Under certain market, competitive and regulatory conditions, the strategic integration of repair into product design, aftermarket structures and business models can be economically advantageous. Within these drivers, two benefit logics can be distinguished: an aftermarket and control logic, in which repair access is designed to secure monetisation and quality control, and a longevity and relationship logic, in which repair is operationalised as part of life cycle-oriented service provision and long-term customer relationships.

A key economic driver of R2R lies in the aftermarket. In many industries, repair, maintenance and spare parts markets have higher margins than the primary sale of products, while product sales sometimes generate only low or negative contribution margins.³ ²⁶ ¹²⁵ ¹²⁷ Service and spare parts businesses thus enable recurring revenue streams over the useful life of products that have already been sold.¹²⁵ Under these conditions, R2R can be designed as a strategically controlled opening of repair access, whereby OEMs expand repair access without completely relinquishing control of key aftermarket parameters, while at the same time limiting potential value losses through third-party providers or unofficial repair solutions. Monetisation continues to take place via spare parts sales, authorized networks, software access, training and certification.¹ ⁸ Such models can help reduce so-called “value leakage” (Svensson et al., 2018, p. 14), which occurs when missing or unattractive repair options lead to informal repair markets or premature product replacement.¹ Lenovo and Motorola are practical examples of the controlled opening of repair markets. They make repair manuals, spare parts, warranty information and DIY materials openly accessible, while at the same time continuing to control aftermarket structures through partnerships with repair platforms such as iFixit and networks of independent repair shops. Repair is thus integrated as an independent, monetisable component of the aftermarket strategy without completely liberalising the repair market for independent players.¹ ⁶ ¹⁵ Another example is Caterpillar, which specifically integrates repair and remanufacturing into authorized aftermarket structures by returning used components, refurbishing them and remarketing them with a warranty. This is a reference case for how repair access can be structured to ensure quality control, brand consistency and the limitation of value leakage in the aftermarket.¹ ⁶

Another market- and business model-related driver is the generation of recurring revenue streams across the product life cycle. Repair and maintenance services open up the possibility of systematically integrating complementary revenue sources such as service income, upgrades or extended warranties into business models.¹⁴ ⁷¹ With the transition to service- and usage-based business models, repairability is becoming a key business requirement, as long-term service revenues depend on the maintainability and replaceability of key components.¹⁴ ⁶⁶ Patagonia is a practical example of integrating repair into a longevity-oriented business model.⁶ The company provides repair information, offers inexpensive materials for DIY repairs, operates its own repair infrastructure and organises repair events. Repair is thus established not as an exception, but as a normalised practice and institutionally embedded in the product strategy.⁶ Similarly, Nudie Jeans integrates repair as an integral part of its service offering by providing free repair services throughout the product life cycle.¹⁴

R2R is gaining economic relevance, particularly in the context of circular value creation strategies. Repair is closely related to more extensive Value Retention Processes such as refurbishment and remanufacturing, which enable significant cost and resource savings compared to new production.¹⁷ ⁶³ ⁷¹ Remanufacturing in particular is associated with considerable material cost savings and lower energy and emission intensity, thus acting as an economic lever within circular business models.¹⁷ ⁷¹ This provides an incentive for companies to consider repairability as early as the product design stage, as easy-to-disassemble, modular and standardised product architectures and organized reverse processes are described as functional prerequisites for economically viable refurbishment and remanufacturing strategies.¹⁷ ⁷¹ ¹⁴¹ Repairability thus acts as a structural condition for the economic scalability of circular business models.¹⁴ ⁶⁶ An often-cited industry case is Xerox. The company develops modular copying systems in which compatible modules are reused across several product generations. At the end of leasing contracts, devices are taken back, dismantled, and functional modules are remanufactured and integrated into new generations of devices. This strategy enables significant material and production cost savings and directly influences product design and architecture decisions, with repair and modular interchangeability being key prerequisites for the economic viability of the remanufacturing system.¹⁷ ¹⁴¹

From a business perspective, R2R is also relevant in the context of competition and innovation, provided that repairability is used as a strategic product differentiation feature. While OEMs cite short-term losses in new product sales, longer product life cycles and fewer updates can create incentives to focus on substantial innovations and new value propositions.⁶ Fairphone is an example of repairability as a competitive positioning strategy. The company pursues a consistently modular product architecture in which key components such as the display, battery, camera, speakers and connectors are individually replaceable and can be replaced using standard tools. Spare parts are offered at transparent prices and supplemented by freely accessible repair guides. Fairphone illustrates that repairable product design can exist as an alternative competitive model to short-cycle replacement logic and that repairability can be specifically positioned as a product feature.¹ ⁶

3.2.1.2 Regulatory-strategic drivers

Regulatory-strategic drivers arise where legal and political frameworks make repairability a strategically relevant planning variable for product design, aftermarket structures and corporate risk allocation.⁶ ¹⁵ This increases the incentive for companies to proactively integrate repair requirements as part of product, service and business model decisions in order to strategically manage legal, liability and adaptation risks as well as future investments in aftermarket and service processes.⁴⁰ ¹⁴²

A key regulatory and strategic driver arises from the increasing internalisation of external environmental and disposal costs through instruments such as Extended Producer Responsibility, take-back obligations and repair-related requirements. Costs that were previously largely externalised are thus increasingly integrated into corporate cost, risk and investment decisions, thereby increasing the economic relevance of durable and repair-friendly product design.⁶ ¹⁴² Under these conditions, repair-friendly products can generate cost and risk advantages, in particular through reduced disposal costs and the limitation of regulatory and liability-related risks throughout the product life cycle.⁶ ⁷¹ ¹⁴²

Another regulatory and strategic driver of R2R arises from the growing relevance of repair restrictions in aftermarkets under competition and antitrust law. Repair and spare parts restrictions are increasingly being viewed not as legitimate entrepreneurial freedom, but as potentially actionable market foreclosure strategies, especially in cases of existing lock-in effects and information asymmetries.⁶ ³⁵ ⁵⁴ This creates strategic pressure on companies to design repair and aftermarket strategies defensively in terms of antitrust law and to control repairability not exclusively through market foreclosure, but increasingly through product, service and system architectures. Repair thus becomes an element of competition and aftermarket strategies that are regulatory-compliant and structurally resilient.¹ ⁶ ³⁵

From a business perspective, consumer protection law is a direct strategic driver, as it enforces minimum standards for products and services regardless of market share and directly integrates repair into cost, design and liability decisions.⁶ ³² ¹⁵ In particular, information requirements and the prohibition of misleading business practices increase the incentive to consider repairability transparently and consistently in product and service communication, as repairability is considered a purchase-relevant product feature.⁶ ¹⁴³ Legal warranty and guarantee regulations are of particular strategic importance. Obligations to repair or replace defective products free of charge within specified periods, as well as extended warranty periods, integrate repairability directly into corporate cost and design decisions. This creates a preventive incentive for companies to systematically consider repairability in product design in order to limit warranty, liability and service costs.⁶ ¹⁵

Legislative reforms act as a strategic driver by pre-structuring repair requirements in product, service and investment decisions in the long term. While regulatory fragmentation creates planning uncertainty in the US context, in the European context there is increasing pressure to adapt due to the cross-sector consolidation of binding repair obligations through consumer, product and environmental law.⁶ ¹¹ ¹¹² The EU Directive on Common Rules Promoting the Repair of Goods institutionalises repair as a separate regulatory issue for the first time and specifies the pressure to implement it, including through repair obligations, information requirements and the long-term availability of spare parts for certain product groups, as well as the establishment of a European online platform for repairs.⁵¹ ¹¹² For companies, this indicates increasing regulatory path dependency, imposing increasing legal and compliance risks on investments in repair-unfriendly product and aftermarket structures.¹ ¹¹² In addition, ecodesign requirements oblige manufacturers to ensure the long-term availability of certain spare parts and to disclose repair and maintenance information. Several product-related implementing regulations also stipulate that software and firmware updates must not impair the functional performance or energy efficiency of products unless this is disclosed transparently. This effectively makes repairability a regulatory component of product design and update strategies.⁴⁵ ⁴⁶

3.2.1.3 Technological-organisational drivers

From a company perspective, technological and organisational drivers arise primarily where digital product architectures and software-based control logics have a significant impact on the practical feasibility of repairs. In software- and IoT-intensive product categories, the actual feasibility of repairs depends less on the physical replaceability of individual components than on controlled access to diagnostic functions, software interfaces and authorization mechanisms.¹⁵ ²¹ Repairability is thus described in the literature as a question of access to and control over digital interfaces.

Against this background, companies need to structure digital repair access from an organisational perspective. If such access is not provided in a formalised manner, independent repairers may be required to rely on workarounds that can entail legal uncertainties as well as security and control issues.²¹ ²⁶ In the IoT context in particular, repairs are regularly linked to software reconfiguration, pairing or update processes, which are typically controlled by the manufacturer.⁴ ⁶ If software support is terminated or the necessary digital access is not provided, this can lead to functional limitations or premature obsolescence.⁴ ⁶ The formalised provision of digital access, diagnostic functions and spare parts structures enables manufacturers to organise repair processes within controlled quality and safety frameworks.⁶ ²¹

In addition, ensuring the availability of spare parts becomes an operational bottleneck variable, as repairs cannot be carried out despite technical interchangeability if the necessary components or tools are not available.¹⁵ Access to original spare parts and specialised tools in authorized repair programs is regularly linked to integration into manufacturer-affiliated service networks.⁶ This makes spare parts management a structural prerequisite for the practical feasibility of repairs and, from a company perspective, gives it both operational and quality assurance significance in the aftermarket.¹⁵ ²⁶

3.2.1.4 Brand, reputation and stakeholder-related drivers

From a firms’ standpoint, R2R is also gaining strategic relevance in areas where repairability influences the perception, evaluation and legitimacy of corporate actions vis-à-vis external stakeholders. In an environment of digital transparency, public comparability and visible user experiences, repair practices are becoming increasingly relevant to reputation and thus have an indirect but strategically effective impact on corporate decisions.⁶ ⁸ ⁷¹ ⁹¹

From a reputation perspective, repairability acts as a signal for product quality, reliability and long-term usability beyond the initial purchase. Positive repair experiences strengthen trust in the brand and manufacturer, as repairability is interpreted as an expression of responsible product design and sustainable performance promises.⁷⁶ ¹³⁵ Transparent repair options and repair-friendly design thus stabilise brand reputation, especially in markets with high comparability and limited functional differentiation.⁶ ¹¹ ¹⁵ ⁷⁶ Cooperation models with external repair platforms such as iFixit increase the visibility of repair information and can have a reputation-stabilising effect, as external comparability and transparency become structurally embedded.⁶

Open or partially open repair structures can also generate learning and innovation-related feedback effects by allowing external actors such as independent repair shops, user and developer communities to contribute product-related problem solutions and user experiences.¹ ⁸ This integration signals organisational openness and responsiveness and can thus have a positive effect on reputation.⁸ ⁹¹

Reputation effects ultimately also unfold in the context of social and institutional expectations. Repairability is the subject of attention from civil society, consumer policy and investors. Restrictive repair practices are often criticised as an indicator of resource-intensive and short-lived business models, while repair-friendly products are considered consistent with sustainability and circular economy narratives.⁶ ⁸ Repairability thus serves as an external reference point for assessing corporate responsibility in terms of product life cycle, resource use and waste prevention.⁶ ⁷⁶ In the context of sustainability-related assessment frameworks and ESG reporting, repairability is also gaining importance as an implicit expectation of external stakeholders, especially where product-related life cycle impacts are addressed as a relevant sustainability dimension.⁶ ⁸

3.2.1.5 Systemic resilience and transformation logics

Systemic and long-term drivers emerge where repairability contributes to securing value creation under changing market, resource and usage conditions. The focus here is on the long-term robustness of product and business models in the face of commodity price volatility and supply risks.⁷¹

A key systemic driver is the strategic importance of raw material and supply risks, with circular concepts explicitly described as a way of reducing material costs as well as warranty and failure risks, and limiting dependence on volatile primary raw material markets.⁷¹ In this context, repairability acts as a lever for extending service life and reuse, thereby reducing exposure to price and supply chain risks.⁴⁰ ¹⁴² ¹⁴⁴

Another systemic driver arises from the shift from product-based to usage- and performance-based business models. In such models, maintenance, repair and downtime costs remain more strongly with the supplier, which means that repair-friendly product design and maintainability become directly relevant to managerial decision-making and influence cost and risk allocation over the entire life cycle.¹⁴ ⁶⁶ A practical example of this is Rolls-Royce with its Power-by-the-Hour model, which markets a guaranteed operating time rather than the physical engine. Maintenance, servicing and functionality are integral parts of the contractually guaranteed service, shifting the economic logic from one-off transactions to long-term service relationships.¹⁴ ⁶⁶

Repairability is thus systematically linked to early product development and architectural decisions, as later adjustments involve less design freedom and higher costs.¹⁰ In this context, repairability is understood as the result of targeted design-for-repair practices that systematically take into account product architectural features such as disassembly, openability, modularity and component standardization.¹⁰ Early consideration of these features is described as a prerequisite for economically viable repair and service life strategies.¹⁴⁵ While Fairphone was analyzed in section 3.2.1.1 as a competitive differentiation strategy, here it serves as a reference case for the systemic anchoring of repairability in product architecture. The modular design and the interchangeability of central components without special tools show that repairability is not added retrospectively, but is implemented as a structural design decision.¹ ⁶

The drivers described above unfold their effect in the context of restrictions and conflicting goals, which are analyzed in the following chapter as barriers to implementation.

3.2.2 Barriers in the right to repair context

Barriers to expanding repair access and thus to the firm-level implementation of R2R arise from economic incentive structures, strategic control interests and institutional conditions under which repair markets are organized. These barriers arise where expanding repair access affects or challenges existing revenue models, market positions, control mechanisms over processes and aftermarkets, and established organisational and operational processes. Analytically, these barriers can be differentiated into market- and incentive-related, structural-technological, legal-strategic, organisational and exogenous framework conditions. This chapter systematises the barriers along these dimensions and focuses exclusively on inhibiting factors from a corporate perspective. The central question is under what conditions repair appears to manufacturers as a risk to existing value creation and control architectures and is therefore strategically constrained.

3.2.2.1 Market and business model barriers

Market- and business model-related barriers arise where repair measures interfere with existing revenue logics, sales strategies and aftermarket structures, thereby affecting key economic performance parameters.

A key market and business model-related barrier to R2R arises from the possibility that repair and service life extension could reduce demand for new products and thus undermine existing sales models.³⁰ ¹¹⁵ Extended service lives and declining replacement frequencies correspond to declining new product sales, particularly in markets for standardised consumer goods.¹¹⁵ This creates a revenue risk for manufacturers, as business models are often geared towards repeat replacement purchases and predictable product turnover.³⁰ Furthermore, opening repair markets to independent providers can undermine control over service and spare parts markets, which are a significant source of revenue for many manufacturers.²⁶ ⁵⁴ From a manufacturer’s perspective, extending repair rights increases the risk of increased competition in the service and spare parts market and thus potential margin erosion.⁶ ⁵⁴ The opening up of aftermarkets may, in line with the doctrine developed in Eastman Kodak v. Image Technical Services, be associated with a loss of control over service and parts markets, particularly if independent suppliers gain access to spare parts or technical information.³⁵ This creates a structural barrier for manufacturers, as opening up repair markets is associated with uncertainty about revenue shifts between the primary market and the aftermarket and about the long-term stability of existing control and monetisation structures.⁶ ³⁵ In addition, repair and refurbishment services can trigger internal cannibalisation effects if they act as substitutes for new products.¹³ ¹⁴¹

Compared to new production, repair is labor-intensive and can only be standardised to a limited extent.¹³ ¹¹⁵ Rising labor costs make repairs relatively more expensive, while new products are becoming cheaper due to global production structures.¹¹⁵ Since repair decisions depend largely on the ratio between repair and replacement costs, the probability of repair decreases significantly as the proportion of repair costs increases.¹¹⁵ As income rises, the propensity to repair also decreases, while the probability of replacement increases.¹¹⁵ In addition to price and income effects, uncertainty regarding quality, reliability and expected service life also influences the demand for repairs.¹¹⁵ Concerns about improper repairs, possible safety risks or the use of non-original spare parts can further limit the use of repair services.⁵⁴ Investments in repair-friendly design, spare parts availability and service infrastructure involve long-term fixed costs and require sufficiently stable demand.¹³ When short-term fluctuations in repair demand coincide with long-term investment decisions, it becomes difficult to plan the economics of repair-related business models.¹³ ¹¹⁵ In addition, organizing after-sales networks is complex, as spare parts availability, decentralized service infrastructure and uncertain demand are difficult to forecast.¹²⁵ Demand in the aftermarket features uncertain, failure-related events and is therefore difficult to forecast.¹²⁵ A fragmented repair landscape also makes it difficult to ensure uniform quality and safety standards.⁵⁴ Reputation and liability risks often remain with the manufacturer, even if repairs are carried out by independent actors.⁵⁴

3.2.2.2 Technological and design-related barriers

Technological and design-related barriers result from product architectures and system designs that structurally limit repairability and thus restrict the practical implementation of R2R. They can be divided into physical and architectural restrictions, software-based control mechanisms, and strategically influenced durability and replacement logic.

A key technological and design-related barrier to R2R arises from product architectures that make repair considerably more difficult due to physical, mechanical and material-related design techniques.¹¹ ²² ⁵⁴ The use of glued housings, soldered components, welded device casings, and proprietary screws and connection systems reduces the ability to open devices without causing damage and to replace individual components.¹¹ ⁵⁴ ⁹¹ This limits the accessibility of the product structure, as repairs often require special tools, specific process knowledge or tools with restricted access.²¹ ¹³⁵ These design decisions increase the complexity and duration of repairs, thereby increasing repair costs relative to the price of a new product, which further weakens repair as an economic option.¹¹ ¹¹⁵ Such architectural specifications have a long-term impact on structure, as design decisions made early on combine later adaptations to repair-friendly concepts with organisational and development-related adjustment costs.⁹ ⁷¹ In addition to accessibility-related limitations, integrated or monolithic product architectures also represent a structural barrier. With such architectures, individual components cannot be replaced independently of one another, meaning that the failure of one part often necessitates the replacement of entire assemblies or the entire product, even though functional residual values remain.⁴³ ⁷¹ The limitation here is not primarily the ability to dismantle the product, but rather the lack of functional separability of individual elements. This limits the technical feasibility of modular repair options and means that repair measures are structurally geared towards replacing integrated units.¹¹ ⁹¹

With the increasing digitalisation of consumer and capital goods, repair barriers are shifting from the physical level to software-based control mechanisms.²¹ ³¹ Access to diagnostic functions, calibrations and activations is often tied to proprietary software, server infrastructures or authorized access codes.⁵⁴ This can limit repairs even when physical intervention would otherwise be possible.²⁶ ³⁵ Mechanisms such as parts pairing, software-based component authentication or the deactivation of functions after unauthorised repairs can result in devices remaining functionally limited despite successful hardware repairs.³¹ ⁵⁴ Cloud and server-based dependencies exacerbate these limitations, as repairs cannot be completed without a connection to the manufacturer’s systems or without server-side approval.³¹ ⁵⁴ From a company perspective, opening up corresponding interfaces can entail additional liability, security and data protection risks, which are described as difficult to assess or quantify outside authorized networks.⁵⁴ At the same time, reputational risks can arise if malfunctions following third-party repairs are attributed to the manufacturer, even though there was no access to the specific repair process.⁵⁴

Product design can have market-related effects beyond technical parameters, as durability, repairability and replacement cycles interact with existing market and sales structures.⁴³ ³⁰ The design of components for limited lifespans, the use of mechanically or thermally stressed weak points, and the coupling of hardware and software updates influence the timing of economic obsolescence.⁴³ ³⁰ ⁹¹ Such design decisions can influence replacement cycles without imposing formal repair bans.³⁰ Repair-friendly designs, on the other hand, tend to enable longer service lives and thus influence existing sales structures and replacement frequencies.⁴³ ⁷¹ A shift to durable and repair-friendly product strategies requires adjustments in product development, service and revenue models, the economic effects of which can be highly uncertain from a company’s perspective.¹³ ⁶⁶ Design decisions can thus have indirect competitive effects by influencing existing business models or shaping the structure of repair markets.²⁶ ¹⁴¹

3.2.2.3 Legal-strategic barriers and control instruments

For manufacturers, legal-strategic mechanisms structure the conditions under which repair markets operate by regulating access to spare parts, information, and technical interfaces.⁶ ²¹ ⁵⁴

While section 3.2.2.2 describes the technical characteristics of software-based access restrictions, these mechanisms are regularly reinforced by intellectual property rights and contractual provisions.⁶ ²¹ ⁵⁴ Beyond this protective function, intellectual property rights can constitute independent barriers to market entry and access to information by limiting access to compatible spare parts and repair-related knowledge.¹ ²¹ ⁵⁴ Design patents on external or functional spare parts, such as bodywork, display or housing components, can restrict market entry by compatible third-party suppliers and enable manufacturers to maintain control over the spare parts market.¹ ²¹ Trademark law is also used as an indirect control instrument, as the labelling of internal components creates legal uncertainties in the import and distribution of refurbished spare parts. The associated risk of customs intervention has a deterrent effect on independent repair shops and can favor manufacturer control in the aftermarket without requiring explicit repair bans.³ ²¹ ³¹

In addition, repair manuals, diagnostic data, service codes and software interfaces are regularly withheld on the grounds of copyright or trade secret protection. This practice perpetuates information asymmetries between manufacturers and independent actors and makes it difficult to offer marketable repair services even where physical spare parts would be available.¹ ²⁸ ³¹ ⁵⁴ Legal enforcement measures against the publication of repair information and the threat of costly legal proceedings reinforce the deterrent effect without the need for judicial clarification.³¹

At the contractual level, this foreclosure can be further reinforced by EULAs and the contractual design of authorized repair networks. EULAs often prohibit reverse engineering, software access or modifications and thus effectively act as a repair restriction, even if such interventions may be permissible under copyright law.²¹ ³⁶ ⁵⁴ At the same time, authorized service programs impose high participation, certification and ongoing compliance requirements, including costly training, audit and reporting obligations, technical integration projects or economic participation conditions, which are often prohibitive for small and medium-sized repair shops and can influence price and quality competition in the repair market.⁶ ⁵⁴

Manufacturers also consolidate their market position through exclusive supply and distribution agreements. Exclusive contracts with component manufacturers or firmware providers prohibit the sale of key spare parts, chips or software updates to independent third parties. In combination with tying arrangements, such as linking spare parts or firmware access to the manufacturer’s own service contracts, this creates barriers to market entry for independent repair providers without the need for formal repair bans.³ ⁶ ²¹ ⁵⁴

Finally, legal and regulatory uncertainty significantly increases the strategic effectiveness of these barriers. The blurred line between permissible repair and impermissible reconstruction in patent law creates a pronounced deterrent effect for independent repair providers, who must anticipate potential liability and litigation risks.³¹ ¹³⁸ In the US, the possibility of federal preemption arguments exacerbates this uncertainty, as state repair laws can be portrayed as potentially incompatible with federal intellectual property protection. This further reduces planning and investment certainty for independent repair infrastructures.¹¹ ²¹

3.2.2.4 Organisational and implementation barriers

In addition to legal and market foreclosure mechanisms, significant barriers to repair and R2R also arise at the level of internal company organization and operational implementation. These barriers stem from production logics, cost structures, and organisational incentive structures and control systems oriented towards linear value creation and new product sales.¹³ ⁶⁶ ⁷¹

A key barrier to implementation lies in the operational inertia of established production and service logics. Manufacturers have optimized their supply chains, production systems and performance indicators primarily for efficiency, throughput and scaling of new production. Repair and service activities for older product generations often appear to be an inefficient deviation in this system, as they require heterogeneous processes, variable throughput times and non-standardised quality conditions.¹³ ⁹¹ Added to this is the high capital and complexity commitment involved in maintaining spare parts. The obligation to keep spare parts available over long periods of time ties up storage capacity, current assets and management resources, while sales and demand forecasts for older models are subject to considerable uncertainty. These costs are incurred regardless of the actual demand for repairs and thus act as an implicit deterrent to a broad opening of repair access.¹³ ⁶³ Furthermore, training, certification and qualification requirements within authorized repair networks create additional operational hurdles. The complexity of modern products with short innovation cycles and heterogeneous brands and models requires broad technical skills and continuous training, which incur significant ongoing costs and are difficult to recoup.¹⁵ ⁶³ Access to relevant repair resources in authorized networks is often tied to ongoing training and certification requirements, creating additional financial and organisational obligations for independent repair shops.⁸ These structural qualification requirements make repairability a permanent organisational commitment.⁸ ¹⁵

At the level of internal coordination and interface structures, coordination and integration problems represent a significant barrier to the implementation of repair and return strategies, as repair, reuse and reverse logistics require close integration of product development, production, service, logistics and IT, as well as the involvement of external service and logistics partners, whereas these functions in established industrial organizations are only designed to a limited extent for backward-looking value-added processes.¹³ ⁹¹ A lack of cross-organisational and cross-lifecycle information flows on product architecture, material composition, software versions and component compatibilities increases the operational coordination effort along the repair chain and complicates scalable repair and reuse processes. Particularly in complex product and supply structures, there is a lack of standardised interfaces through which repair-related knowledge can be reliably transferred between OEMs, service units and external actors.¹³ ¹⁷ Moreover, return and reverse logistics systems involve considerable coordination and fixed costs. Repair and reuse processes require the localisation, collection and technical evaluation of used products or components, with uncertainty regarding return quantities, timing and quality. These uncertainties necessitate independent organisational, logistical and IT-based integration services, as repairs cannot rely on standardised, plannable material flows as in new production.¹³ Although OEMs have information advantages in terms of product design, component structures and typical failure patterns, they themselves face high infrastructure and coordination costs for returns, condition assessment and spare parts integration, which limit the economic viability of repair-based strategies.¹³

Additionally, structural incentive and responsibility problems arise at the interfaces with authorized service partners and outsourced repair service providers. Repair-related outsourcing relationships enable the operational execution of repairs, but often result in incomplete allocation of investment costs and returns. Neither OEMs nor service partners fully internalise the long-term benefits of investing in repair quality, reliability and process improvement. As a result, investments in repair-related capabilities and infrastructure remain below the strategically efficient level, which limits the scalability and long-term stability of repair structures.¹²⁸ ¹⁴⁶

3.2.2.5 Social-normative barriers as external structural constraints

Finally, prevailing social norms and cultural framings favor early replacement over the maintenance of functioning products and no longer anchor repair as a natural option within the product life cycle, but rather as an exceptional practice.¹³ ⁴³ ³⁰ ¹¹⁵ For companies, this creates an external demand and acceptance risk when expanding repair access, as status-oriented consumption can structurally devalue repair services and thus limit the scalability of repair-based business models in the context of regulatory transformation.⁴³ ³⁰ ¹¹⁵ Social pressure to visibly demonstrate technological up-to-dateness reinforces premature replacement decisions and reduces demand for repair services even when repair options are fundamentally available.⁴³ ¹¹⁵ At the same time, manufacturers and market actors shape dominant safety and risk narratives in which independent repairs are framed as potentially dangerous, unsafe, or problematic from a data protection perspective, which can increase social acceptance of repair restrictions.⁶ ³¹ ⁵⁴ These narratives normatively shift responsibility for functionality and safety to manufacturers and, from a public perspective, reinforce controlled and authorized repair structures.³¹ ⁵⁴ Repair processes also clash with widespread expectations of convenience and immediate need satisfaction, as waiting times, organisational effort, and uncertainties regarding the repair outcomes are perceived as disproportionate costs and can therefore favor new purchases over delayed repair solutions.⁵ ¹¹ ¹¹⁵

Added to this is a societal devaluation of manual repair work, associated with an institutional stigma attached to manual technical service work, which reduces both the attractiveness of repair professions and the visibility of professional repair expertise.¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁸ This normative devaluation makes it more difficult for companies to establish repair as a high-quality, reputation-enhancing component of their service offering and to position it as an equivalent alternative to new product or replacement models.¹¹⁵

Finally, the increasing functional opacity of technical products in everyday use reduces opportunities for independent diagnosis and intervention, thereby creating a growing distance between users and devices and diminishing the attractiveness of repair decisions from a demand perspective.¹¹ ⁴³ ³⁰

Overall, from a corporate perspective, these socio-normative factors act as external structural constraints that structurally limit the economic scaling of repair-based business models.¹³ ⁴³ ¹¹⁵

Chapter 3 conceptualised repairability as an implementation process to be organized within firms and developed an iterative process logic as an analytical framework. Following the steps of assessment, governance and boundary decisions, translation into design and access structures, and integration into after-sales, service, and logistics processes, the analysis identified where repairability is operationally anchored within the product life cycle and which monitoring and feedback loops trigger adjustments. The systematisation of drivers and barriers shows that expanding repair access does not depend on a single lever, but is negotiated through recurring trade-offs within the respective process steps, including spare parts and information provision, software access, and qualification and network structures.

4 Outlook

This thesis has systematically examined R2R as a complex and interdisciplinary field of research and integrated key perspectives, drivers and barriers to implementation from a corporate perspective. Based on a topic- and concept-driven literature analysis and the derivation of a practice-oriented process logic, it becomes clear that repairability should not be conceived as an individual measure, but rather as an organisational capability that is embedded in internal company decision-making and implementation processes throughout the entire product life cycle. The developed process logic offers companies structured guidance on how R2R-related requirements can be transferred across product groups into existing governance and implementation structures.

At the same time, the analysis shows that the practical implementation of repairability is significantly influenced by dynamic technological, regulatory, and market developments. In particular, the increasing digitalisation of products, software-based control and protection mechanisms, and rising requirements for IT security and product liability are shaping the configuration of repair access and its boundaries. At the regulatory level, further specification and differentiation of existing legal frameworks can be anticipated, which will likely require additional adjustments at the company level.

Despite existing empirical contributions, the evidence on the effects of R2R regulation remains highly product group- and context-dependent and has so far only been analyzed to a limited extent in a comparative manner. In particular, comparative analyzes of the effects on product lifespans, repair markets, and corporate strategic adjustments offer further potential for insight, as existing studies are often limited to specific product groups or individual regulatory contexts.

Overall, this thesis illustrates that R2R is not a static set of rules, but rather a field of action that requires continuous strategic and organisational shaping, the further development of which depends on the extent to which ecological objectives, technological dynamics, and economic requirements can be integrated into consistent and practicable implementation approaches.

References

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Hanley, D. A., Kelloway, C. & Vaheesan, S. Fixing America: Breaking Manufacturers’ Aftermarket Monopoly and Restoring Consumers’ Right to Repair. Open Markets Institute, 2020.
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