🔧 Why repair fails — even when services exist

In Lahti, smart device such as smart phone and smart watches repair services are available. Households value reuse and repair.

And yet, replacement often wins. Why?
Because at the moment of failure, repair feels uncertain.
❌ Prices are unclear
❌ Quality is hard to judge
❌ Services are difficult to compare or even find
The Lahti Circ@Home pilot starts from this reality — and from a clear feasibility boundary.

🧭 What we can change — and what we can’t
The pilot does not attempt to run long behavioural programmes with households. Instead, it focuses on what is realistically actionable:
✔ improving decision conditions
✔ increasing transparency and visibility
✔ strengthening municipal legitimacy
✔ supporting repair at the episodic decision moment

💡 Three complementary interventions

• Smart for Repair – a lightweight decision-support tool that makes repair options comparable and understandable
• Lahti Circular Economy Ecosystem Map – visualising where circular services exist (and where gaps remain)
• Repair Voucher (concept phase) – exploring affordability and the city’s enabling role

Together, these interventions target the structural failure points of repair decisions: missing information, low visibility, and perceived risk.

🔺 Circularity through coordination — not persuasion
Circularity here does not emerge from nudging households. It emerges when:

• local repair SMEs provide technical capacity (R4 Repair)
• the municipality acts as an orchestrator, enabler and legitimiser
• households are supported as decision-makers, not behaviour-change subjects