Exploring Consumer Acceptance of Refurbished Smart Phones in the Sri Lankan Market: Circular Economy Adoption in Sri Lanka

The circular economy is a paradigm of production and consumption that incorporates sharing, leasing, reusing, repairing, refurbishing, and recycling existing resources. Due to environmental contamination, the majority of economies are transitioning from linear to circular economies. Refurbishment is a procedure in which a professional firm collects and repairs used things before reselling them to new customers. In this study, researchers focused on identifying the factors that influence consumer acceptance of refurbished smartphones. This study is qualitative since there is a lack of knowledge about the circular economy concept in the Sri Lankan context. Researchers conducted eight semi-structured interviews to collect data for the study. Purposive sampling technique was used to select respondents for the study. The interviews lasted for 20 to 30 minutes and were transcribed into a Word document. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the interview data. Researchers discovered the factors under the topics of personal factors, advantages, obstacles, and risks of accepting refurbished smartphones by Sri Lankan mobile phone consumers. Finally, researchers discovered that consumers prefer brand-new smartphones over refurbished smartphones. However, consumers choose refurbished smartphones over second-hand smartphones.