A More Creative World Is a More Sustainable One: How to Increase Length of Product Usage Through Creativity and Emotional Attachment

Overproduction and overconsumption represent key issues in the fight against resource waste and environmental degradation. Whereas the scientific debate has mainly focused on how to increase product durability by improving tangible aspects (e.g., technical characteristics, materials used, production processes), this article focuses on a consumer-based view of durability, examining how long consumers plan to use a product for, a construct labeled length of product usage (LPU). The core thesis is that LPU might depend not only on tangible product characteristics but also on intangible product characteristics, such as creativity, defined in terms of high novelty and adequate appropriateness. In advancing this creativity-based LPU account, the authors argue that higher product creativity leads to higher LPU by strengthening consumers’ emotional attachment to products. Seven preregistered studies, employing different products, populations, and creativity manipulations, empirically support the proposed framework. The results also show that the effect of creativity on LPU, via emotional attachment, is especially pronounced for nonowners versus owners and for mass-market versus luxury products. By emphasizing that creativity can be key to fostering sustainable consumption, this research advances the literature on the antecedents of LPU and product durability, offers implications for companies, and provides avenues for future research.