An Environmental Perspective on Clothing Consumption: Consumer Segments and Their Behavioral Patterns

Wencke Gwozdz, Kristian Steensen Nielsen and Tina Müller
Additional contact information
Wencke Gwozdz: Department of Management, Copenhagen Business School, Society & Communication, CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR), Porcelænshaven 18A, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Kristian Steensen Nielsen: Department of Management, Copenhagen Business School, Society & Communication, CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR), Porcelænshaven 18A, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
Tina Müller: Department of Management, Copenhagen Business School, Society & Communication, CBS Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (cbsCSR), Porcelænshaven 18A, DK-2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 5, 1-27

Abstract: Efforts to decrease the environmental impact of today’s clothing industry across the entire process of production, purchase, maintenance, and disposal can be driven by either suppliers or consumers. Changing the behavior of the latter, however, requires an understanding of current clothing consumption patterns—a currently under-researched area. We therefore shed more light on these patterns in the purchase, use and maintenance, and discard phases by analyzing unique data on 4617 adult consumers (aged 18–65) from Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the U.S., who we divide into five segments based on clothing consumption behavior. At the low end of the spectrum is a consumer segment that earns the least, consumes mostly budget brand clothing, and is the least open to alternative more environmentally friendly business models such as fashion leasing or clothing libraries. At the other extreme lies a small segment that earns the most, engages in high consumption of medium or premium brand clothing, and is most open to alternative business models. Lying between these two is a primarily female segment that purchases an above average amount of clothing from budget brands. In addition to the segments’ different reported purchase behavior and a varying openness to alternative business models, we identify differences in willingness to pay for clothing made of material that is more environmentally friendly than conventional fabrics. These observations suggest several promising directions for environmental interventions tailored toward specific consumer segments.

Keywords: clothing consumption; consumer segmentation; environmental impact; Western countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (36)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/5/762/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/9/5/762/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:9:y:2017:i:5:p:762-:d:97817

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().