Evolving consumer preferences for residential decking materials

Abstract

Major changes are taking place in the residential decking market driven by concerns over wood preservatives and the resulting phase-out of chromated copper arsenic (CCA)-treated wood and recent entry into the marketplace by wood-plastic composites. Using conjoint analysis, this study explores consumer perceptions regarding residential decking materials over two time periods, 2000 and 2003. Type of material and lifetime were the most important decking attributes. Of lesser importance were annual maintenance and price. Major changes took place over the three-year study period with respect to opinions towards treated wood and wood-plastic composites. Consumers became much more negative towards treated wood and wood-plastic composites received nearly equivalent gains. The CCA controversy clearly had an impact in the marketplace and we demonstrate the usefulness of conjoint analysis in capturing this change. Key words: decking, consumer, conjoint analysis, plastic lumber, treated wood, cedar, substitution

Product attributes affecting consumer preference for residential deck materials

“…This result agrees with another study that investigated playground manufacturers' perceptions of treated wood: health criteria are the most important considerations in material choice (Vlosky and Shupe 2005). Consumer perceptions regarding residential deck materials were investigated by Fell et al (2006). Based on two conjoint studies from 2000 and 2003, they concluded that consumers have become more negative towards treated wood and more positive to wood-plastic composites during the study period.…”

“…Concerns about the potential toxicity of chemically treated wood have led to attempts to phase out such products in several countries. As early as 2001, CCA-treated products were withdrawn from the Canadian market because of health concerns (Fell et al 2006), and a similar restriction on CCA-treated wood was imposed in 2003 by the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority (2005aAuthority ( , 2005b (Jacobsen and Evans 2002). However, CCA is allowed to be used in industrial installations and structures in cases where durable materials are necessary for public safety.…”

“…Preservative-treated wood is often used in private gardens as well as in parks, for example, home owners build outdoor decks to expand living space and connect the home with the outdoors; over 6.5 Â 10 6 residential decks were estimated as having been constructed in the United States (cf. Smith and Sinclair 1989;Shook and Eastin 2001;Fell et al 2006). In western Europe, 21% of the total production of preservative-treated wood is used by home owners in gardens (Western European Institute for Wood Preservation 2006).…”

The perceived quality of wooden building materials—A systematic literature review and future research agenda

“…Price and costs form the economic dimension of wooden properties. Price as an extrinsic cue is significant in predicting the quality attributes at the point of purchase (Steenkamp, 1989) and it was investigated in many studies (Bernard et al, 2018;Cai & Aguilar, 2013;Fell et al, 2006;Malá et al, 2019;Roos & Nyrud, 2008b;Teisl et al, 2002). Some studies also investigated the expensiveness of wooden material (Kuzman et al, 2012), costs (Strobel et al, 2017), financial demands of the construction (Moresová et al, 2019), and affordability (Spetic et al, 2007).…”

“…Price was discovered to be a significant factor influencing purchase decisions in some studies (e.g., Bernard et al, 2018;Strobel et al, 2017). However, when investigating residential wooden decking (Fell et al, 2006) and wood flooring , price was of lesser importance. In contrast to Fell et al (2006), in a study by Roos and Nyrud (2008b), price was seen as an important attribute of wooden deck materials.…”