| dc.description.abstract | Sustainability within the fashion industry is a topic of increasing importance. In the fashion
industry today, consumers mainly adopt fast fashion products. Fast fashion has promoted an
unsustainable consumer behaviour making the industry one of the worst polluters. Moreover,
the industry frequently faces scrutiny for its poor labour practices. In response to these
environmental and social problems, the concept of slow fashion has arisen, promoting
sustainable production and consumer behaviour. Slow fashion is currently just a small part of
the fashion industry, emphasising the need to study the topic, to enable the shift from fast to
slow fashion. Therefore, our purpose was to study antecedents of slow fashion adoption.
Consumer Orientation towards Slow Fashion (COSF), consisting of five dimensions; equity,
authenticity, functionality, localism, and exclusivity, has been used as an adoption framework
for slow fashion. We tested this framework on a Norwegian population, to validate the
framework on a new demographic. In addition, we believed that COSF was missing an aspect
of slow fashion, repairing clothes. Therefore, we chose to test an extended version of the
COSF framework, with a repair dimension. COSF had never been tested when controlling for
the widely used Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). Hence, we chose to test the COSF and
TPB together.
To study the antecedents of slow fashion adoption we did a quantitative survey on students at
the Norwegian School of Economics. The results showed that the dimensions of equity,
functionality, authenticity, and localism had a direct positive influence on slow fashion
purchase intention. The repair dimensions in the extended COSF framework did not influence
purchase intention towards slow fashion. When testing COSF and TPB together, authenticity
and functionality from COSF, along with all dimensions from TPB, influenced slow fashion
purchase intention. We also explored possibilities of indirect effects, where only the
functionality dimensions had a influence on purchase intention, mediated through attitude.
The most important theoretical implication was that the COSF and TPB should be used jointly
when researching slow fashion adoption in the future. For managerial implications, the results
could help marketing managers adjust their marketing mix. The recommendations focus on
adapting the product and promotion to revolve around the authenticity and functionality
dimensions, and recommend measures to increase attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived
behaviour control towards slow fashion. | en_US |
