Motivations and Attitudes: An Empirical Study on DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Consumers in Hungary

The market for homemade and handcrafted items has expanded significantly in recent years. Related activities range from community-supported agricultural activities, tinkering at home, renovating our houses, design elements, and defining space in the world of gastronomy and fashion as well, and it extends to cover many other activities, where the “producers” also double up as the consumers. The number of scientific analyses in Hungarian language dealing with this subject is very low and no deep empirical results (interviews, questionnaires, ethnographic analyses, etc.) to support our scientific experience exist yet. The purpose of this study is first to review the terminology issued and difficulties that are related to this phenomenon, and, based on the results of a questionnaire survey, and secondly to explore the motivations of DIYers and the attitudes behind their actions. In our study, we mean on Do-It-Yourself (DIY)—in line with the vast majority of literature—all activities, services, and products, which is implemented by own hands not under industrial circumstences. The target group of the online questionnaire survey was the people that are involved in DIY. The questionnaire was shared by a decorator and her DIY Facebook page (“Juditu”) on 3 October 2017. The size of the relevant sample was 270. The research questionnaire was built up from a demographic part, a part that is related to general DIY activity, and a part that sought to find the motivation of DIY members. The practice of DIY activities might be linked more to the personality and creativity; so, the group can be more homogeneously described along the common personality traits than by demographic variables. Among the motivations of DIYers the economic one (saving money) is not the most dominant. Analyses by interpretative index categories confirmed the hypothesis that it is difficult to separate one motivational force from the other; in many cases, one catalysing force generates the other, thus a complex multifactorial motivational set dominates the study target group. From the three groups, which were identified by analysing the motivations, in two groups those individuals are dominant, which use DIY activities to express their own inner world, and for whom spending time creatively, making something alone and for themselves, and creating something useful and valuable, is very important. These results were novel and, naturally, they can be perfect starting points of further studies because of the intactness of the research topic.