Consumer Behaviour and Sustainable Fashion Consumption PDF by Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu

Contents

Analysing the Consumer Behavior Regarding Sustainable Fashion Using Theory of Planned Behavior
Canan Saricam and Nazan Okur

Abstract Sustainable fashion, which is a term used for describing the clothing that is designed for longer lifetime uses, produced in ethical production systems using materials and processes that are not harmful to environment and the workers and which incorporates the fair trade principles with sweatshop-free labor conditions and makes use of eco-labelled or recycled materials, gained favor by the fashion industry specialists and the consumption market. Although the aspects of sustainable fashion regarding the selection of material, manufacturing process and supply chain were discussed by the researchers, the analyses examining the approach of the consumers towards sustainable fashion are quiet limited in number. Extended from Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) with an additional dimension corresponding to a volitional control, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) was confirmed to be an effective model to predict the consumer intentions analyzing the three independent determinants of intention, which are “attitude towards the behavior”, “subjective norm”, and “perceived behavioral control” respectively. TPB was used to explain the consumers’ approach towards either sustainability concept in general or sustainable products and processes in specific fields such as organic food consumption, green lodging, visiting green restaurants, purchasing luxury fashion produced in sweatshops, buying organic cotton apparel, using environmentally friendly transportation.

Within the analysis, TPB model was used in original form or extended form with additional constructs self-construal, beliefs, ethical concerns or past experiences. In this study, the approach of the consumers’ intention toward sustainable fashion purchasing was investigated using TPB where TPB model was applied in original form and extended form including the behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs and control beliefs affecting the determinants of the intention construct. After conducting an online survey among 339 participants in Turkey, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the models. The findings showed that both models were validated and can be used to explain the approach of the consumers towards sustainable fashion products. According to both models, among the three constructs determining the intention was found to be attitude construct primarily, which shows the degree of favourable or unfavourable evaluation of the behaviour in question. The perceived behavioral control corresponding to the perceived ease or difficulty of performing the behavior was found to be less influential on the customer intention whereas the subjective norms defined as the perceived social pressure to perform or not perform the behavior was found to be influential more on the original TPB model. In the extended TPB model, whereas the attitudes were found to be influenced by behavioural beliefs, no relation was found between control beliefs and perceived behavioural control. Finally, the subjective norms and mormative beliefs acted as a single construct to be influential on the purchase intention.

Keywords Sustainability · Sustainable fashion · Consumer behaviour Theory of planned behaviour

1 Introduction
Increasing population and diminishing natural resources enabled the sustainability concept to becomemuch more important. Since it has the core purpose ofmeeting the needs of todays’ generationwithout giving harm to that of the future generation, itwas approached positively to sustainability concept by the countries, the governments, the companies and the consumption market in the end. Actually, sustainability is a term linking the economic development, the social development and the environmental protection, and therefore it is highly related with the activities established in the manufacturing industries and so the fashion industry. Because, the fashion industry actually designs, produces, markets and delivers products to meet the requirements of the end users and it works hand in hand with the textile and apparel producers at one end; with the distributors and the distribution channels on the other end. Within this respect, it is heavily influential on the economy considering the manufacturing and retailing industry; it influences the society because of ethical production and selling of fashion products; finally, it effects the environmental pollution by using many different types of chemicals and water especially in dyeing and printing stages of the production. Thus, the term sustainable fashion was adopted by the fashion industry to decrease the concerns about environmental protection and to satisfy the consumer who are sensitive to the environment and have special concerns regarding the ethical and social issues.

Regarding the sustainability concept, there are many studies analysing different aspect of the concepts which covered the environmental influences of the textile and apparel production, providing sustainability within the fashion supply and value chain, the ethical and social compliance aspects of the fashion production and selling. Nonetheless, the researchers gave different names to the concepts related with sustainability by making some limitations and specific definition. These studies made valuable contribution on the understanding of the consumers’ approach toward sustainability and sustainable fashion products. Nonetheless, the number of studies investigating the approach of the consumers towards sustainability in fashion industry and analyzing the consumer behaviour are quiet limited in number.

The existing studies analysed only one or two concepts of sustainable fashion such as the approach of the consumers toward the apparel products from organic cotton, the luxury fashion production in sweatshops.

Theory of planned behaviour (TPB) was applied in many studies some of whose specific focus was sustainability. Derived from theory of reasoned action (TRA) with the addition of the construct perceived behavior control (PBC), TPB stated that the intentions whose determinants are ‘attitude towards behavior’, ‘subjective norms’ and ‘perceived behavioral control’, are the immediate antecedent of the behavior. Although, it was not applied to analyze the consumer behaviour towards sustainable fashion products in the fashion industry, TPB was used to analyse the consumer behavior in specific fields such as green products, hotels, organic food and so on. The purpose of this chapter is investigating the consumer behavior toward sustainability in fashion industry. The specific aims are analysing the different aspects of the sustainability in the fashion industry, the approaches of consumers towards this concept and modelling the consumer behaviour using theory of planned behaviour underlying the specific motivations lying behind.

Using sustainable fashion term throughout the chapter and modelling, the first section of the chapter covered the sustainability and the related concepts, the specific terms used in fashion industry to imply the sustainability issues. This section was followed with the summary of studies within the literature which describe the perspective of the consumers and companies toward sustainability. In the third section, the TPB and its main constructs were defined and it was followed with the parts dedicated to the description of the motivations and antecedents in the original and proposed extended models. The explanation of the constructs was related with the issues regarding sustainability. The third section ended up with the applications of TPB model in terms of investigating sustainability concept in the other fields and specifically the fashion industry. Finally, in the last section an empirical study to determine consumer behaviour towards the sustainable fashion products in Turkey was given for which TPB model was employed within the analysis.