Beyond Adoption: Circular-Use Capability for Consumer IoT Products

Research and policy debates on sustainable Internet of Things (IoT) products often focus on adoption: whether consumers will purchase devices marketed as efficient, recyclable or environmentally responsible. This Perspective shifts attention to the conditions that keep connected products in use after purchase. We define circular-use capability as an ecosystem-level, configurational capacity arising from the alignment of product architecture, digital infrastructure, market services and institutional arrangements. Its four dimensions – functional continuity, serviceability, transferability and recoverability – are complementary rather than simply additive: a critical deficit in one dimension can become the binding constraint on continued use. The concept extends repairability and product-life-extension perspectives by integrating physical serviceability with software support, cybersecurity, platform continuity and secure ownership transfer. Romania is used as an illustrative context rather than an empirically assessed national case. Circular-use capability is an enabling capacity, not evidence of sustainability; its environmental value depends on realised use extension, displacement, rebound and lifecycle impacts.