A model of lost habits: towards a strategy to improve the acceptance of product service systems

User acceptance is one of the largest barriers for the success of product-service systems (PSS). Often, PSS require a user to change his or her behaviour, which may conflict with existing habits. This results in non-acceptance of the PSS, which is disappointing for designers who aim to develop successful PSS. Research on acceptance of PSS has been focused on the context in which PSS could operate, and on how PSS should be designed and marketed, in order to trigger and stimulate behaviour change. These methods centre on the viewpoint that change is a necessity. However, change is difficult, because people tend to hold on to their habits. In this paper we will propose that habits can be used in the design process, for which we introduce the term “lost habits”. When people lose habits due to undesired events, they may be very motivated to accept something that is instrumental to restore their habits. A PSS that addresses these so-called lost habits, might therefore be successfully accepted. In this paper, we will present a model that builds on this point of view, and we will present an explorative study to find how this model can be used in the beginning of a design process.