It's a bit abstract right now. Let's see what happens after the fix is rolled out, the owners need to schedule their appointments for the recalls, deal with (possible) lower fuel economy and performance, and (possible) lower resale values.
Not clear if these results will hold up, but CR ran some tests that seemed to indicate that running the car in "cheat mode" had a relatively small impact on performance - "both cars added less than a second in the 0 to 60 mph time. The Jetta saw fuel economy drop from 53 to 50 mpg, and the Sportwagen went from 50 to 46 mpg." http://www.wired.com/2015/10/vw-diesel-cheat-mode-mpg-perfor...
I'm pretty sure VW won't get hurt even a little by all of this. "Voting with wallet" doesn't work. If you don't make a corporation pay up front to the public (i.e. to the government), nothing will change.
But those effects are long-term and therefore less quantified and immediately apparent. Seems to me, the major influencer on how drivers feel about VW is the news items about how bad VW is.
The DPF is like a muffler with a trap to catch the soot and ash from the exhaust. That black stuff you see coming out of a truck but never from a TDI even when in cheat mode. When the DPF is cycling, the engine passes unburned fuel from intake to exhaust on every fourth stroke. The unspent fuel lands on the trap, and when the hot exhaust from the next stroke ignites that fuel, the soot and ash are reduced, which in turn reduces NOx emissions. If they are smart with the software, they'll try to run the DPF when the car is cruising not accelerating, and the impact on performance will be hardly noticeable at all.
Cycling the DPF more often will likely result in a longer lifespan for that unit. Currently they need to be cleaned when they become fouled. Cycling the DPF more frequently, thus burning the soot out of the trap more regularly will likely reduce fouling.