*3.3.8 Social meaning (identity and status)*

The *Social meaning* dimension contains three characteristics: negligible (e.g. stereo system, DVD player, MP3/MP4 player … ), moderate (e.g. laptop, smartphone, smart TV … ) and highly significant (e.g. washing machine, refrigerator, air conditioner … ). This dimension aims to capture some indication of the level of social meaning typically attached to a given EEE category. Material possessions are often attached to social meaning, in other words, they communicate belonging to a certain social group [57]. For example, cars and houses have been symbols of wealth and success, i.e. social status, for decades. A similar situation can be observed increasingly prominently with EEE, such as mobile phones [54, 58]. It is straightforward to see that this social meaning has little to do with the functionality of the products (see high heels and fast cars, for example), making products that are highly stereotyped and to which a great deal of social meaning is attached, much more susceptible to emotional responses. Such EEE categories are more likely to awake the desire to replace products before their EoL, but also potentially to lead to an overestimation of the replaced equipment [54]. This establishes the level of social meaning attached to a given EEE category as an important indicator of susceptibility to being prematurely replaced and kept out-of-use, hence affecting all consumer behaviour phases.

Not surprisingly, given that the EU's classification system [4] does not consider consumer behaviour but rather operational and material differences, we found their classification to poorly differentiate among EEE categories with respect to consumer behaviour. As shown in **Table 2** in bold, in the last iteration of the taxonomy, we classified items that the EU classification system regards as pertaining to different classes. The classification of these under our taxonomy's dimensions and characteristics revealed that they only differed on three out of the eight proposed dimensions, indicating that with respect to our taxonomy's dimensions and under considerations of consumer behavioural outcomes, the EEE categories were actually very similar. In other words, any behavioural differences could easily be attributed to one of the three dimensions on which they differ, but behavioural differences would be less likely to emerge. This suggests that EU regulation could benefit from the perspective offered by our taxonomy in accounting for the associated differences. Additionally, this supports the utility of our taxonomy as an alternative compass for understanding the differences across EEE categories for consumer behaviour and *e*CLSC research.
