Female students’ awareness toward sustainable purchase consumption of clothing (Case study: Art faculty of Alzahra University)

Abstract

Sustainable purchasing and consuming clothes is a massive trend worldwide due to the great amount of production, its complications and also the active role of women. It is specifically so among young population of Iran, though the country is moving towards sustainable development. This article aims to investigate the degree of awareness of the notion of sustainability and its impact on the purchase and consumption of clothing, among the young educated female consumers. The research is based on descriptive and survey method with questionnaire based data. The statistical population is (N=100) female students of BA and MA courses in textile, fashion and industrial design with 20-35 years of age and sample size of 80 students. 30 questions with quintuple Likert and 0.735 Cronbach’s alpha are being asked. The analysis is done by statistical software. The results show that while there is a great trend of sustainable purchase and consumption, there is no enough awareness of this issue in the section. The knowledge of interviewees about sustainability is about the routine environmental issues; even some anti-sustainability approaches are clearly seen in this case, which necessitates a more extensive and precise consciousness-raising. Raising awareness and information about sustainable purchase and consumption within the consumer population, as future professionals of clothing industry, can guide it towards better planning sustainable based strategies in production, purchase and consumption.

Keywords

• clothing
• sustainability
• consumer awareness
• sustainable consumption
• women