Customer Attitudes towards Sustainable and Circular Fashion Initiatives

The fashion industry produces ever-larger volumes of clothing at a faster pace, often leading to lower quality and a growing amount of clothing waste; however, this does not only depend on production processes as fashion consumption and end-of-use management are also key aspects to consider. Several sustainable and circular initiatives have arisen in the fashion industry such as in-store take-back services, reuse, and recycling in the downstream supply chain processes but it is still unclear how customers perceive them. Therefore, this research aims to explore customer awareness and behaviour towards similar circular fashion initiatives. An online survey was carried out in Italy shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic, the collected data were analyzed through descriptive statistics with SPSS and ANOVAs. The results highlighted a limited level of awareness and adoption of sustainable and circular fashion initiatives among the respondents, also highlighting inadequate marketing communication by fashion companies.