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TreasureHunter: a system to increase the reuse of local used goods

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Increasing the reuse of locally available consumer goods is one way to make consumption more sustainable. We present TreasureHunter, a system to help consumers find and share used goods available at thrift stores in their local area. TreasureHunter enlists frequent thrift store shoppers to help find requested items for those who lack the time or inclination to search for the items themselves. Incentive-centered design was used to craft a solution to fit the needs of all types of shoppers. TreasureHunter consists of an online community that is also accessible from mobile phones so that it can be used while at a thrift store. The proposed system works best on smartphones, though any Internet-capable phone could also be used. By motivating more people to buy used goods instead of new, everyone can benefit as consumers pay less for the goods they desire and fewer resources are wasted in the transportation and consumption of new goods.

References

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Bardhi, F. Thrill of the hunt: thrift shopping for pleasure, in Advances in Consumer Research 30, eds. P. Keller and D. Rook, Valdosta, GA: Association for Consumer Research (2003), 375--376.
[2]
Christiansen, T. & Snepenger, D. Information sources for thrift shopping: is there a 'thrift maven?' Journal of Consumer Marketing 22, 6 (2005), 323--331.
[3]
Cooper, T. Slower Consumption: Reflections on product lifespans and the throwaway society. Journal of Industrial Ecology 9, 1--2 (2005), 51--67.
[4]
Darley, W. & Lim, J. Effects of store image and attitude toward secondhand stores on shopping frequency and distance traveled. Intl Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 27, 8 (1999) 311--318.
[5]
Craigslist. http://www.craigslist.com/.
[6]
FreeCycle. http://www.freecycle.org/.
[7]
Hall, C.A.S., Pontius, R.G., Coleman, L. & Ko, J. The environmental consequences of having a baby in the United States. Population and Environment 15, 6 (1994), 505--524.
[8]
Nissanoff, D. FutureShop: How the New Auction Culture Will Revolutionize the Way We Buy, Sell and Get the Things We Really Want. Penguin Press, New York, NY, USA, 2006.
[9]
Salvation Army. National Annual Report. Alexandria, VA: Salvation Army, 2007.
[10]
U.S. Dept. of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Expenditure Survey. Washington, DC: U.S. Dept. of Labor, 2006.

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    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '09: CHI '09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 2009
    2470 pages
    ISBN:9781605582474
    DOI:10.1145/1520340
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

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    Published: 04 April 2009

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    Author Tags

    1. incentive-centered design
    2. local resources
    3. mobile technology
    4. online communities
    5. thrift stores

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    CHI EA '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 385 of 1,130 submissions, 34%;
    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

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