To participate or not? Research on second-hand apparel recycling intention under the guidance of environmental psychology

Abstract

The apparel industry, one of the largest manufacturing industries in the world, generates a large amount of solid waste. It is necessary to reduce excessive apparel consumption in order to reduce waste of the apparel industry. This study takes China as an example to explore the residents’ second-hand apparel recycling intention (SARI). Purchasing second-hand, renting and swapping apparel are comprehensively defined as second-hand apparel (SA) recycling. Then, the influence of six environmental psychological factors on SARI is explored, including environmental concern (EC), trust in social media (TSM), consumer innovativeness (CI), face consciousness (FC), perceived consumer effectiveness (PCE) and subjective norm (SN). In this study, 348 valid questionnaires are collected, and structural equation model is used to process the data. The results show that EC, CI and PCE have no significant effect on SARI. SN and TSM positively promote SARI, while FC has a negative effect. The results are expected to provide in-depth insights to further understand and improve the SARI of residents in emerging economies from the environmentally psychological level.