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Explaining participation in the self-service economyColin C. Williams a , Sara J. Nadin b & Jan E. Windebank ca School of management , University of Sheffield , Sheffield , UKb Management School , University of Sheffield , Sheffield , S102TN , UKc Modern Languages , University of Sheffield , Sheffield , S102TN , UKPublished online: 12 May 2011.
To cite this article: Colin C. Williams , Sara J. Nadin & Jan E. Windebank (2012) Explainingparticipation in the self-service economy, The Service Industries Journal, 32:11, 1811-1822, DOI:10.1080/02642069.2011.574284
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Explaining participation in the self-service economy
Colin C. Williamsa∗, Sara J. Nadinb and Jan E. Windebankc
aSchool of management, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK; bManagement School,University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TN, UK; cModern Languages, University of Sheffield,
Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK
(Received 14 March 2011; final version received 17 March 2011)
To explain participation in the self-service economy, competing theorisations havevariously depicted participants as rational economic actors, dupes, seekers of self-identity, or simply doing so out of economic necessity or choice. To evaluatemotives for self-servicing in the home improvement and maintenance sector, asurvey of 120 households in an English locality is reported. This will reveal that alltheorisations are valid to differing degrees, and through a process of induction, willoffer a typology that combines the existing theorisations by differentiating between‘willing’ (rational economic actors, choice, identity seeking) and ‘reluctant’(economic and market necessity, dupes) participants in self-servicing. The outcomeis a call to evaluate the broader applicability of this typology when explaining thewider self-service economy.
Keywords: self-service technology; technology-based self service; consumer motives;do-it-yourself
Introduction
Although the service sector has been a prominent source of jobs across the globe, much
service provision remains conducted on an unpaid self-servicing basis (Bittman, Matheson,
& Meagher, 1999; Gershuny, 1978, 2000; Leyshon, Lee, & Williams, 2003; Marcelli,
Williams, & Joassart, 2010; Williams, 2005, 2007, 2008). The aim of this paper is to
evaluate critically explanations for participation in the self-service economy by analysing
the motives for self-servicing in the home improvement and maintenance realm and in
doing so, to draw out tentative lessons for explaining the wider self-service economy.
To achieve this, the first section will briefly review the literature on the self-service
economy in general and self-servicing in the home improvement and maintenance
realm more particularly. Revealing the existence of various competing theorisations for
participation in self-servicing, the second section then evaluates critically these rival
explanations by reporting the results of face-to-face interviews with 120 households in
an English locality regarding their motives for self-servicing in the home improvement
and maintenance realm. This will reveal that all sometimes apply and through a process
of induction, will offer a typology that combines the existing theorisations by differentiating
between various type of ‘willing’ and ‘reluctant’ participant in self-servicing. The paper
then concludes by calling for evaluations of the applicability of these findings to the
wider self-service economy.
ISSN 0264-2069 print/ISSN 1743-9507 online
# 2012 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02642069.2011.574284
http://www.tandfonline.com
∗Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
The Service Industries Journal
Vol. 32, No. 11, August 2012, 1811–1822
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Before commencing, however, a working definition of the self-service economy in
general, and in the home improvement and maintenance sector more particularly, is required.
A self-service economy is one in which a substantial and growing proportion of household
expenditure is invested in durable goods (e.g. tools, information technology, machinery)
which enable people to produce services for themselves, rather than outsourcing the work
to external service providers. For example, the washing machine enabled people to do
laundry themselves, while the internet has allowed consumers to check-in at airports,
withdraw money from banks, organise holidays, etc., on a self-servicing basis. Self-servicing
activity in the home improvement and maintenance sector, therefore, is where unpaid home
maintenance and improvement work are conducted by household members on their
household. This is popularly termed ‘do-it-yourself’ (DIY) activity in a British context.
What is known about the self-service economy?
Over the long run of history, goods production has shifted away from self-production in
the home and towards production en masse in factories (Rifkin, 2000; Smuts, 1971).
This led to a separation of home and production (Braverman, 1971; Reid, 1934). Those
who previously made goods for their own use increasingly purchased factory-made items.
The transfer of service provision to external providers, in contrast, has not been of
the same magnitude. Although goods production has moved out of the household,
the emergence of cheap and mass produced durable goods, as well as innovation in the
nature of goods, has enabled households to produce a whole range of services for
themselves (Gershuny, 1978, 2000; Williams, 2005, 2007). This is here termed the
self-service economy thesis. For example, consumers now dial a telephone number them-
selves instead of using a telephone operator, press a button in an elevator rather than using
an elevator operator, and push a shopping cart around a food store rather than request a
salesperson to collect each individual good for them. Similarly, laundry was for many
decades in the early and middle of the nineteenth century ‘sent out’ to external providers,
especially amongst the middle classes, but the washing machine brought it back into the
realm of self-servicing. The move of goods production into the marketplace, therefore,
seems to have been only partially followed by the shift of service provision into this
sphere (Williams, 2005; Williams & Windebank, 2001).
Indeed, quite the opposite seems to be often occurring. A whole range of service
provision seems to be shifting from the formal marketplace back into the realm of self-
servicing. This is in part due to the role of innovation (Bergh, Thorgren, & Wincent,
2011; Diochon & Anderson, 2011; Lee, Lim, & Pathak, 2011; Sommer & Haug, 2011).
The advent of information and communication technologies, for instance, has enabled
the emergence of new forms of self-servicing previously done by an external service pro-
vider. Examples include: self-checkoutsat supermarkets with no till operator present;
paying bills by telephone or checking one’s bank balance oneself via an automated
phone system or the internet; tracking home deliveries via the internet; managing one’s
finances online; organising a holiday oneself rather than going to a travel agent;
booking theatre tickets online oneself and purchasing airline tickets, checking-in and
selecting a seat online. Indeed, the advent of technologies to enable self-servicing has
rapidly transformed entire service industries. ATMs in the banking industry have
moved cash withdrawals near enough entirely into the self-servicing realm, as has the
internet transformed the travel industry.
Until now, nevertheless, few studies have sought to estimate the proportion of service
provision delivered on a self-servicing basis, nor whether the share that is self-serviced is
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growing, static or declining. Nor is much known about which types of external provider
are being replaced by the self-service economy or why it is occurring. Although Gershuny
(1978, 2000) argues that self-servicing is in major part due to the availability of cheap
manufactured goods that raise household productivity (e.g. convenience foods, dish-
washers, washing machines) and growing labour costs in the service economy, little
detailed research has so far been conducted on the reasons for self-servicing across the
economic landscape.
Self-servicing of home improvement and maintenance activities
It is similarly the case when examining the self-servicing of home improvement and main-
tenance activities, the focus of this paper. Very little is known about either its magnitude,
nature or why it is occurring. One of few sources of data are the Mintel market reports
which look at the changing size and nature of the DIY retail market as well as who par-
ticipates in DIY (Mintel, 2003, 2006, 2010).
Examining the findings in relation to the UK, the site for the empirical research
reported later in this paper, these market reports reveal that although the DIY retail
sector rapidly grew between 2000 and 2004 (see Williams, 2008), between 2005 and
2009, sales by DIY retailers grew just 4%, reaching £9.8 billion in 2009 (Mintel, 2010).
It also highlights the declining levels of participation in DIY from 61% of the population
in 2004 to 56% in 2009, which Mintel (2010) argues means that such endeavour is being
increasingly outsourced, a trend referred to as ‘do-it-for-me’ rather than ‘DIY’ (Mintel,
2010). Such purported trends, however, are based on assumption rather than evidence.
To explain the reasons for self-servicing of home improvement and maintenance
activities, two broad approaches have been adopted. On the one hand, wider theorisations
of consumption and the consumer have been applied to self-servicing in this realm. On the
other hand, there are those focussing on whether participation is economically determined
and/or which distinguish between those conducting such self-servicing out of economic
necessity or choice. Both these approaches suffer from intractable problems, as will
now be shown.
Those applying broader theorisations of consumption and the consumer to explain self-
servicing in the home improvement and maintenance realm have adopted three contrasting
theoretical approaches. First, there is the rational utility maximisation model of consump-
tion and the consumer which derives from neo-classical economic thought. Here, the par-
ticipant in self-servicing is depicted as somebody treating their home as a business
investment and as engaging in home improvements in order to maximise the market
value of their property by measuring the costs of their self-servicing activities against
their investment return. Brodersen (2003) in his study of DIY in Denmark, for example,
depicts participants in self-servicing as rational economic actors who calculate the
money saved by doing-it-yourself and as pursuing projects to maximise the value of
their home, despite the evidence gathered elsewhere that self-servicing is more about
increasing the comfort than value of the home (Littlewood & Munro, 1996).
A second theorisation of consumption and the consumer applied to self-servicing in
this realm is that which depicts the consumer as a dupe or passive subject whose aspira-
tions are formed and manipulated by the mass media, and served and fuelled by retail
businesses (Slater, 1997). From this perspective, home improvements are read simply as
a response by passive subjects who are seeking the latest media-inspired fads and ‘must
haves’ for their home. Such an account is found in the reports by Mintel (2002, 2005,
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2006) who place great emphasis on the rise of television makeover programmes and
property development shows as the primary driver for the growth in self-servicing.
A third and final broader theorisation of consumption and the consumer sometimes
applied to self-servicing are the post-modern approaches that view consumers as
manipulating commodities to produce symbolic meanings and constitute identities
(e.g. Abelson, 1989; Benson, 1986; Buck-Morss, 1989; Campbell, 2005; Crewe, 2000;
Dowling, 1993; Leach, 1984; McCracken, 1998; Williamson, 1992; Willis, 1991; Wolff,
1985). From this perspective, participation in self-servicing is seen to be conducted to
realise effects which convey individuality and self-identity. Examples are the work of
Woodward (2003) in Australia who argues that those participation in self-service activity
prioritise aesthetic ideals, and Clarke (2001) who argues that self-service activity is about
constructing self-identity and that home improvements are an attempt to reconcile who
people are with their image of who and what they would like to be.
The problem with applying all these broader theories of consumption and the
consumer to self-servicing activity in the home improvement and maintenance realm,
however, is that they focus upon why people undertake home improvements (e.g. instal-
ling a fireplace) rather than why self-servicing is used instead of outsourcing. Installing a
fireplace may of course be a product of: a rational economic person seeking to improve the
market value of property; a consumer responding to media inspired aspirations of interior
design and an attempt to express individuality by acting as a manipulator of symbols.
However, these ends are all achievable independent of the use of self-servicing. They
could just as easily be achieved by employing a tradesperson to realise them. Such theories
thus tell us little about why self-servicing was used.
Those studies that evaluate why people engage in self-servicing when undertaking
home improvement and maintenance work, meanwhile, have so far focussed on
whether participation is economically determined and/or whether people are driven
more by economic necessity or choice to do so. Earlier studies sought to evaluate
whether self-service activity was conducted out of economic necessity such as because
they could not afford to outsource the task to a tradesperson. Analyses of the American
Housing Survey (Bogdon, 1996; Pollakowski, 1988) and the Scottish House Condition
Survey (Littlewood & Munro, 1996), however, reveal that the relationship between
income and participation in self-servicing is not clear cut. The consequence in recent
years is that studies have distinguished between those engaging in self-servicing out of
economic necessity and those who do so more out of choice (Davidson & Leather,
2000; Mintel, 2002; Munro & Leather, 2000; Williams, 2004). The problem, however,
is that this distinction does not in practice exist when empirically evaluated. As Williams
(2004) identifies in a study of DIY in urban England, in over 80% of instances where DIY
was used, both economic necessity and choice were co-present in the motives of those
engaged in self-service activity.
The explanatory power of these existing theorisations of self-servicing also appears
wanting in relation to recent market reports on the reasons for participation in DIY.
Given that Mintel (2010) find that only 10% of respondents agree that DIY is motivated
by the desire to increase the value of their home, this challenges the depiction of those
engaged in self-servicing as rational economic actors. Similarly, only 18% agreed with
the statement ‘I’m opting to do more DIY/home improvements myself to save money’,
challenging explanations based on ‘economic necessity’. Whilst this could indicate that
DIY is therefore primarily driven by ‘choice’, the finding that only 8% of respondents
agree with the statement ‘I do a lot of DIY, it’s a hobby of mine’, indicates that the theor-
etical dualism of economic necessity versus choice is too simplistic. Neither do the above
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figures support the consumer based theorisation which depicts consumers as dupes or
passive subjects. Only 4% of participants were influenced by ideas found in magazines,
which, coupled with the demise of television makeover programmes, casts doubt on the
suggestion that those participating in self-servicing are cultural dupes whose aspirations
are formed and manipulated by the mass media. The desire for a new look/colour
scheme (indicated by 40% of respondents), along with the desire to up-date the house
because it looked shabby/dated (indicated by 30% of respondents) may offer some
support for post-modern explanations of self-servicing, but more detailed data is needed
before it can be concluded that such reasons are expressive of deeper aesthetic ideals
concerning individuality and self-identity.
Given this, attention here turns towards some inductive research that has sought more
grounded explanations for participation in self-servicing of home improvement and
maintenance activities from face-to-face interviews using open-ended questions.
Methodology
Evaluating self-servicing of home improvement and maintenance activities in anEnglish locality
During 2005, maximum variation sampling was used to select three wards within Basset-
law in North Nottinghamshire to examine the self-servicing of home improvement and
maintenance activities. To do this, three wards with contrasting levels of multiple depri-
vation were selected using the 2000 Index of Multiple Deprivation (DLTR, 2000) that
ranks all wards in England and Wales. One of the most affluent wards within the locality
was thus selected (i.e. Blyth ranked 6070 out of 8414 wards nationally), the middle-
ranking ward (i.e. East Retford West ranked 2451) and one of the wards displaying the
highest levels of multiple deprivation in Bassetlaw (i.e. Worksop South East ranked the
122nd most deprived ward in the UK).The intention underpinning this maximum variation
sampling approach was to ensure that a full range of economic environments were studied
so that the results did not reflect the specific conditions of a particular type of ward as
might have been the case if just one ward had been chosen.
To ensure that the data collected within each ward was representative of the ward, a
spatially stratified sampling method was used (Kitchin & Tate, 2001). Every nth dwelling
was targeted, depending on the number of households in the ward, in order to generate 40
interviews in each locality (120 in total). If there was no response, then after one call back,
the nth + 1 dwelling was surveyed and failing this, the nth 2 1, nth + 2 and so forth until
an interview was completed. This provided a spatially stratified sample of each district. It
meant that the interviews were representative and stopped the sample being skewed
towards certain tenures, types of dwelling and different parts of the district being inter-
viewed. For each household, furthermore, the ‘closest birthday’ rule was used to select
respondents for interview amongst those available in the household at the time.
Turning to the research method employed, the pilot study revealed that relatively
unstructured or semi-structured interviews were problematic. Households could not
recall instances where self-servicing had been used. As such, the decision was taken to
investigate 16 common home improvement and maintenance tasks (which a further
pilot revealed to be the maximum possible before the quality of responses started to dimin-
ish). These 16 tasks were those previously used by Pahl (1984) in his seminal study of
household work practices on the Isle of Sheppey.
For each task, interviewees were asked whether the task had been undertaken during
the past five years. If conducted, first, they were asked who had last conducted the task
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(e.g. a particular household member, a relative living outside the household, a friend,
neighbour, firm, landlord). Second, and if the task had been externalised, they were
asked whether the person had been unpaid, paid or given a gift. Third, and if paid, they
were asked whether it was ‘cash-in-hand’ or not and if so, how much had been paid. If
given a gift, its nature was requested. This allowed self-servicing activity to be identified
along with the source of labour used when the task was externalised. For each task com-
pleted, moreover, the respondent was asked ‘what was your primary reason for using (the
source of labour) to do this task?’ so as to elicit in an open-ended manner their principal
reason. Following this, two further probes were used. On the one hand, the answer they
gave to the above question was inflected. For example, if they responded ‘it was
because I couldn’t afford to do it any other way’, the interviewer simply asked in an
inflected manner ‘couldn’t afford to do it any other way?’. On the other hand, it was
asked ‘is this the only reason?’. Although these interviews resulted in a wide array of
data on household work practices, this paper focuses upon the findings on self-servicing.
Below the results are reported.
Extent of self-servicing
To what extent is self-servicing used to undertake home improvement and maintenance
tasks? Table 1 reveals that the last time these 16 tasks were undertaken, well over half
(57%) were conducted primarily on a self-servicing basis. The implication is that in the
home improvement and maintenance realm, self-servicing is the major mode of provision
used. The surveyed population is more a DIY rather than a do-it-for-me culture. When
tasks are outsourced to external service providers, moreover, such activities are not
Table 1. Home improvement and maintenance work: modes of provision used to conduct 16 tasks.
% doingtask
% of households who last used:
Self-servicing
Unpaid externallabour
Paid informallabour
Formallabour
Odd jobs 92 92 6 2 0Indoor painting 82 81 2 11 6Wallpapering 74 81 2 12 5Outdoor painting 68 70 2 10 18Plastering 58 54 4 29 13Replace/mend
window18 50 9 5 36
Walling/fencing 54 49 3 6 42Maintain
appliances19 48 0 9 43
Install centralheating
11 31 0 8 61
Build an extension 14 29 0 0 71Electrical work 25 24 3 23 50Install bathroom 23 19 0 14 67House insulation 21 16 0 4 80Convert attic 6 14 0 0 86Plumbing 23 11 4 25 61Double glazing 41 6 0 6 88All tasks 39 57 3 11 29
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always externalised to the formal service economy. Only two-thirds (67%) was externa-
lised to service providers in the formal economy. In 7% of cases, it was outsourced to
unpaid labour (kin, friends or neighbours) and in the remaining 26% of cases to the
‘cash-in-hand’ economy.
Not all tasks, however, are equally likely to be conducted on a self-servicing basis.
Indeed, significant variations prevail across different home improvement and maintenance
tasks. Table 1 reveals that those most likely to be conducted on a self-servicing basis were
odd jobs (92%), indoor painting (81%), wallpapering (81%), outdoor painting (70%) and
plastering (54%), whilst those least likely to be conducted using self-servicing were instal-
ling double-glazing (6%), plumbing (11%), attic conversions (14%) and house insulation
(16%). Whether a task is conducted primarily on a self-servicing basis, therefore, appears
to be closely related both to whether it is a major or smaller project as well as the level of
competency or skills required to conduct the task.
Some households, nevertheless, display a greater propensity to engage in self-servicing
than others. As Table 2 reveals, and contrary to what might be assumed, lower-income
households outsource tasks to a greater extent than higher-income households. At first,
this appears to be counter-intuitive. One might, after all, expect higher-income households
to outsource tasks to a greater extent than lower-income households. However, just
because the proportion of tasks outsourced is lower in higher-income households, this
does not mean that higher-income households engage in fewer tasks on a self-servicing
basis. Indeed, and as can be derived from the data in Table 1, households in the
highest-income quartile conduct 27% more tasks on a self-servicing basis than those in
the lowest-income quartile.
Lower-income households, that is, conduct a narrower range of tasks on a self-
servicing basis and these tend to be smaller more mundane jobs. Their greater reliance
on outsourcing, meanwhile, is primarily because more of the tasks they undertake are
urgent maintenance and repair jobs, such as mending a broken window or repairing a
broken tap, that often need to be outsourced in order to be completed. Relatively afflu-
ent households, in contrast, outsource a smaller overall proportion of tasks but these
tend to be for larger home improvement projects, such as an attic conversion, building
an extension and so forth. Meanwhile, the wider range of tasks they conduct on a self-
servicing basis are again more likely to associated with home improvement than repair,
such as installing bathrooms. Hence, there is a qualitative difference in the size and
Table 2. Sources of labour used to conduct home improvement and maintenance activity: byhousehold income.
% of the16 tasks
conducted
% last conducted using:
Self-servicing
Unpaidexternallabour
Paidinformallabour
Formallabour
All households 39 57 3 11 29Lowest income quartile 37 55 3 6 36Lower middle income
quartile32 53 5 12 30
Upper-middle incomequartile
43 65 3 5 27
Highest income quartile 44 59 1 14 26
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nature of the self-servicing and outsourcing activity of higher- and lower-income
households.
Motives for self-servicing
Why, therefore, is self-servicing used? Rather than design the survey so that their
responses had to fit into pre-defined categories (e.g. cost, choice), the decision was
taken at the outset to generate more grounded theory using open-ended questions and
follow-up probes. Having generated these data, the task was then to group them together
according to the common phrases and terms used to explain their participation in self-
servicing. Table 3 displays examples of the common explanations given by respondents
along with how they have been clustered together into groups.
The outcome of this inductive approach is that a more grounded typology of the
reasons for participation in self-servicing has been generated. Analysing the reported
reasons for using self-servicing to complete home improvement and maintenance
tasks, the overarching picture to emerge is that respondents depict themselves as
engaged in either ‘reluctant’ or ‘willing’ self-servicing. Those viewing themselves as
engaged in ‘reluctant’ self-servicing do so either because they cannot afford to out-
source the task or due to problems with regard to finding and using trades-people,
such as getting a tradesperson to turn up, the perceived inferior quality of the end-
product and trust issues related to leaving them alone in the home. In consequence,
the use of self-servicing was often their chosen option but not their first choice. For
those representing themselves as engaged in ‘willing’ self-servicing, meanwhile, the
Table 3. A typology of motives for self-servicing.
Examples of common motives cited Reason for using self-servicingType of self-
servicing
‘I couldn’t afford to pay somebody’; ‘Payingsomebody would have been too expensive’
Economic necessity forces useof self-servicing
Reluctant self-servicing
‘You cannot find tradespeople to do jobs likethis’; ‘Tradesmendo not turn up’
Reliability of tradesperson toturn up
‘The quality you get from trades-people ispoor’; ‘Tradesman not to botch it up’,‘Tradesmen rip you off’; ‘You cannot trusttradesmen to do a decent job’
Reliability of tradesperson withregard to quality and trust
‘We did it to increase the value of our house’ Rational economic calculation Willing self-servicing‘Because I like doing DIY’; ‘I love doing DIY’,
‘It’s all about the pleasure you get fromdoing-it-yourself’, ‘Because of the joy youget learning new skills’; ‘Because of thesatisfaction you feel when you look at whatyou have done’; ‘Because doing it yourself iswhat you should do’; ‘To show myself Icould do it’; ‘To show my wife I could do it’
Pleasure from self-serviceactivity
‘To create something unique to our home’;‘Because you cannot purchase what wewant’; ‘To make our home into anexpression of who we are’; ‘So we candisplay in our home what we are like aspeople’
Individualising end-product/self-identity
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self-service economy was more often their first choice and conducted for reasons
ranging from an economic desire to maximise the value of their home (akin to the
neo-classical model of the consumer), the pleasure they get from self-service activity
(akin to the choice model) or the satisfaction received from creating an individualised
end-product, completing a job, mastering a skill or simply doing something for oneself
(supporting post-modern theories of the consumer).
Having constructed this taxonomy of motives for participating in self-servicing,
Table 4 investigates the results. So far, there has been a tendency, especially in DIY
market research (Mintel, 2005, 2006, 2010), to emphasise the notion that participants in
self-servicing are ‘willing’ and to negate the existence of ‘reluctant’ self-servicing
activity. However, this study displays that across the whole population surveyed the like-
lihood of a task being conducted on a willing or reluctant self-servicing basis is about
equal. There were, however, marked variations in the likelihood of engaging in willing
or reluctant self-servicing across different household-income levels. Amongst higher-
income households, people are markedly more likely to be willing participants in self-
servicing, while the likelihood of self-servicing being conducted on a reluctant basis
increases in lower-income households.
Unravelling further the motives for participation in the self-service economy, 28% of
all such activity was conducted for reasons associated with economic necessity, although
this rose to 43% in the lowest-income households studied. Less than a third of self-
servicing, in consequence, is conducted out of economic necessity, such as because the
household cannot afford to outsource the task to trades-people. Although this explanation,
as one would expect, is more relevant in lower-income populations, the motive of
economic necessity does not explain all self-service activity.
At the time of the survey, a widely recognised problem, which received considerable
media attention, were the shortages of trades-people, including plumbers, electricians,
plasterers and so forth. However, although there has been some discussion about the
problem of trust when outsourcing home improvement and maintenance work (de
Ruijter & Weesie, 2007), this notion of a shortage of reliable trades-people has not
been theorised as an explanation for participation in self-service activity. The outcome
is that the degree to which the problem of finding and using trades-people is a major
driver for self-servicing has not so far been evaluated. In this survey, the finding is that
Table 4. Motives for participating in self-service activity.
Reason for engaging in self-service activity (%):
Allhouseholds
Lowestincomequartile
Lowerincomequartile
Upper-middleincomequartile
Highestincomequartile
Reluctant self-servicing 48 56∗∗∗ 50 40 38Economic necessity 28 43 26 18 16Tradesperson access problems 10 5 12 14 12Tradesperson quality, trust, etc 10 8 12 8 10Willing self-servicing 52 44 50 60 62Rational calculation 14 16 12 10 9Pleasure from process 22 16 23 30 31Individualisation of end-
product/self-identity16 12 15 20 22
Total 100 100 100 100 100
Note: ∗∗∗Statistical significance at 0.001 (0.1%).
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10% of self-servicing was conducted chiefly because of the problems associated with
finding a tradesperson and getting them to turn up, and a further 10% due to problems
with the quality of tradespersons and associated issues related to trust. In total, therefore,
one-fifth of self-servicing was conducted by reluctant self-servicers due to problems with
using trades-people. Examining whether this is more of an issue in some populations than
others, this study reveals that tradesperson reliability is more frequently raised as an
explanation in higher-income households.
For neo-classical economists who read every aspect of personal and domestic life as
operating according to market rationality (cf. Hochschild, 2003), participation in self-
servicing is a rational economic calculation pursued to maximise profits or save money
(e.g. Brodersen, 2003). In this study, however, less than one in seven instances of self-
servicing were found to be premised on this rationale. This clearly displays that self-
servicing is not always embedded in market-like profit-motivated rational economic
calculations on the part of the consumer.
In recent years, previously economic approaches towards consumption have been
somewhat swept aside by a ‘cultural turn’ that places greater emphasis on agency when
explaining participation in consumption. The notion that self-servicing is conducted pri-
marily out of choice, such as due to the pleasure gained from the process, however, is
found to apply to around one in five self-service activities (22%) in this survey and
such an explanation is more prevalent amongst higher-income quartiles.
It is similarly the case when evaluating the post-modern argument that self-servicing is
conducted by willing participants seeking to individualise the end-product for reasons
associated with their self-identity. Less than one in eight self-service activities (12%)
are motivated by such an objective and this is particularly the case amongst higher-
income households. To impute that such rationales are more widely relevant, therefore,
would be to impose the rationales of higher-income groups onto the wider population.
Conclusions
Until now, participants in the self-service economy have been explained as rational econ-
omic actors, dupes, seekers of self-identity, or simply doing so out of economic necessity
or choice (see Williams, 2004). To evaluate which, if any, of these theories apply as
reasons for participation in the self-service economy and to develop more grounded
theory, a study has been here reported comprised of face-to-face interviews with 120
households in an English locality, namely Bassetlaw in North Nottinghamshire, which
investigated reasons for participating in self-servicing in the realm of home improvement
and maintenance.
The finding is that no one theorisation for self-servicing is universally relevant but all
theories are sometimes valid. For a fuller and more comprehensive explanation to be
achieved, therefore, there needs to be a move beyond using one theory and treating the
others as rival competing theories, and towards using them all. This has been here achieved
by inductively generating a new typology to explain self-servicing activity which is theor-
etically integrative. This differentiates between ‘willing’ participants in the self-service
economy who choose to engage in self-service activity either to improve the value of
their home (reflecting the rational utility maximisation model), for pleasure (the choice
model) or to seek self-identity from the end-product (post-modern theory), and ‘reluctant’
participants forced into such self-servicing either for economic reasons (economic deter-
minism model) or due to problems with finding and using trades-people (a market failure
model).
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Although the likelihood of being a willing or reluctant participant in the self-service
economy is about equal in this English locality, in higher-income households, people
are markedly more likely to be willing participants, while in lower-income households
they are more likely to be reluctant participants. Future research, therefore, will need to
evaluate the validity and applicability of this typology for explaining participation in
the wider self-service economy. Not only do further studies need to be conducted of
whether there is a similar ratio of reluctant-to-willing self-servicing in other populations
in different nations and global regions, but there also now needs to be studies of the
validity and usefulness of using this reluctant/willing typology to explain participation
in self-servicing in other service industries (e.g. the travel industry, banking, food
retailing, transport). If this paper stimulates such further research, then it will have
achieved its objective.
Acknowledgements
The data reported here were collected in a survey funded by Nottinghamshire Business-
Link. Their support is gratefully acknowledged. The usual disclaimers apply.
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