Research: The Unintended Consequences of Right-to-Repair Laws

By Luyi Yang, Chen Jin, and Cungen Zhu, Harvard Business Review

January 19, 2023

Right-to-repair legislation is designed to break manufacturers’ monopoly on the repair market, thereby allowing consumers to hold on to their old products longer, so they do not throw away used products and buy new ones as quickly. This would reduce the environmental impact by reducing e-waste and new production. New research, forthcoming in the journal Management Science, challenges this conventional wisdom and finds that the right-to-repair legislation may in some instances lead manufacturers to flood the market with cheap goods, thereby damaging the environment, and in other instances lead manufacturers to dramatically raise the price of goods, thereby hurting consumers. Lawmakers should examine specific product categories, including their production cost and environmental impact, and guard against sweeping, one-size-fits-all legislation.

Read the full article here:  https://hbr.org/2023/01/research-the-unintended-consequences-of-right-to-repair-laws