Empirical study on aesthetics as an influencing factor on sustainability

Considering pressing challenges for human life, such as climate change or resource scarcity, sustainability has become an important constraint in today's value creation. While customer awareness towards sustainability increases, the average product lifetime is observed as declining at the same time. One reason in this context is the phenomenon of psychological obsolescence which makes functional products abundant due to introduction of a new product with better features or effective marketing. Aesthetic product design can be an important lever to solve this problem by increasing attachment of the consumer to the product. Hence, this paper focusses on aesthetics and design as a new influencing factor on sustainability of technical products. Within this paper, an empirical study is presented which aims at pinpointing the interrelations between product characteristics and sustainability using a simple example (wristwatch). Based on the results implications for the development of new, more sustainable products are discussed.