How Long Do Appliances Really Last? A Digest of Our Lifespan Research

Why we study lifespan

Almost all the lifespan evidence underpinning European repairability policy comes from Western and Northern Europe. Central and Eastern Europe is nearly invisible in the literature — yet the rules calibrated on that evidence apply here too. Our research series tries to close that gap. Here is a digest of the five studies our methodology builds on.

1. Lifespan of major household appliances in Czech households

This study combines a review of the international literature with our own survey of Czech households across four categories: washing machines, refrigerators, dishwashers, and tumble dryers. It is the first multi-appliance comparison from the Czech Republic — until now, Czech data was essentially absent from European durability debates. The results show where Czech experience matches EU reference lifetimes and where it diverges.

Why it matters: the reference lifespans the EU builds policy on (e.g. in Ecodesign) cannot simply be transplanted to the Czech market.

2. Washing machine lifespan: first evidence from Central and Eastern Europe

The washing machine is the most studied appliance in European durability research — yet no published estimate had ever come from Central and Eastern Europe. This study provides the first Czech estimate of washing machine lifespan, based on a household survey and lifespan modelling, benchmarked against the Western European evidence base.

Why it matters: waste and repair policy for large appliances rests on data whose regional transferability nobody had tested. Now somebody has.

3. What Czech consumers expect — versus EU Ecodesign references

A survey of 408 Czech adults involved in appliance purchasing decisions, analysed with interval-censored Weibull models. Czech consumers expect major appliances to last roughly 11.5 to 12.6 years. Refrigerator expectations align closely with EU reference values; washing machine and dishwasher expectations fall modestly below them. The strongest predictor of higher expectations is the age of the appliance the household currently uses.

Why it matters: consumer expectations shape replacement timing and willingness to pay for durability — and regional differences mean a one-size-fits-all EU policy may not work equally everywhere.

4. Planned obsolescence beliefs and the Durability Expectations Gap

The same sample of 408 consumers also rated 15 appliance brands. Three headline findings: planned-obsolescence beliefs are pervasive and internally consistent (mean 5.24 on a 7-point scale); there is a significant Durability Expectations Gap — we expect new appliances to last substantially longer than our current ones have; and paradoxically, this distrust barely influences purchase decisions. What drives purchases is perceived brand quality.

Why it matters: consumers suspect manufacturers of deliberately shortening product lives, but lacking credible durability information, they default to brand heuristics. That information gap is exactly what our repairability score aims to fill.

5. Where end-of-life washing machines disappear: missing WEEE in the EU-27

A stock-driven material flow analysis (MFA) for washing machines across the EU-27, calibrated with our lifespan data. A substantial share of end-of-life washing machines bypasses official collection channels — and the study distinguishes beneficial informal circularity (second lives, repairs) from problematic accountability leakage.

Why it matters: the official WEEE statistics used to measure circular-economy performance systematically understate reality. And the credibility of the whole calculation depends on sound lifespan assumptions — that is, on the data from the first four studies.

The takeaway

Appliance lifespan is not just an engineering number — it is an input into policy, prices, and consumer decisions. Our data shows Czech reality differs from Western European assumptions enough to be worth measuring. All findings feed into our ratings database and methodology.