Impact of physical condition on disposal and end‐of‐life extension of clothing

Abstract

Clothing waste is an increasing global problem as "disposable" fashion items are consumed and discarded at rapid rates. Low-quality fashion garments are easily damaged and thrown out due to the low initial investment and replacement cost of other items. Previous research has found physical damage to be a common reason for clothing disposal; however, the degree to which damage plays a role in disposal decisions has not been studied. Therefore, using a survey-based, pre-experimental design, this research examined the extent to which varying levels of garment physical damage influences consumer disposal decisions and garment life extension practices in Edmonton, Canada. Results indicated that damage severity plays a significant role in how respondents choose to dispose, or otherwise deal with, their unwanted clothing. Garment quality and type were also shown to predict disposal method and end-oflife extension strategies.

What Affects Garment Lifespans? International Clothing Practices Based on a Wardrobe Survey in China, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA

“…Two similar studies, one conducted in Canada [21] and another in South Korea [22], showed that several indicators influence whether consumers donate or sell clothing for reuse, and these were similar for both countries. The likelihood of reuse decreases if clothing is severely damaged or is a cheap fast-fashion garment instead of a more expensive, designer brand garment, or if the garment is identified as casual wear (jeans or t-shirt) instead of formal wear (dress).…”

“…Independent variables are introduced in 4 blocks based on the theoretical background. The first block represents garment specific properties (variables 1-3), the second is the demographics of the user (variables 4-9), followed by garment use (variables 10-15), and finally the general clothing practices of the user (variables [16][17][18][19][20][21][22]. For categorical variables, dummy coding was used to be able to compare each level of a variable to the omitted (reference) level.…”

“…Many other variables also contribute significantly. Older consumers generally have older garments, with those aged over 50 keeping 1 year 3 months longer (on average) than garments belonging to the youngest age group (18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29).…”

Motivating Collaborative Consumption in Fashion: Consumer Benefits, Perceived Risks, Service Trust, and Usage Intention of Online Fashion Rental Services

“…Most of the reasons for clothing donation in the circular economy are found to be based on sustainability and environmental values. For example, the flooding of fast fashion has brought about environmental problems, so we see donation to increase clothing lifespan [17,18] and donation prompted by environmental values and social behaviors [19,20]. Therefore, it can be confirmed that fashion donation has the characteristics of nonreciprocity, money irrelevance, singular objects, de facto sharing, and ownership within the sharing/exchange continuum.…”

Green Advertising for the Sustainable Luxury Market

“…Although sustainability has gained more attention from both academics and practitioners, this study focuses on a distinct contrast between fast-fashion and luxury brands in the persuasiveness of green messages. In contrast with luxury products, consumer awareness of sustainability may be low when it comes to the fast-fashion industry because of the increasing clothing waste problem (Birtwistle & Moore, 2007;Degenstein et al, 2020). In addition, since the adoption of sustainable materials is a technically complex process involving the cost of sourcing sustainable materials (Todeschini et al, 2017), consumers are more likely to be skeptical or distrustful of the sustainable practices of fast-fashion brands.…”