Factors affecting sustainable apparel consumption in emerging countries: a systematic literature review

Abstract

The growth of sustainable apparels provides grounding for the emergence of a new consumer market. Surprisingly, this movement has not only taken place in developed countries but also in emerging countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no systematic reviews have been carried out on sustainable apparels, focused specifically on emerging countries. The goal of this systematic review is to analyse the existing literature on various factors that influence sustainable apparel consumption in emerging countries, as well as presenting future research directions. This detailed literature review is guided by the PRISMA Statement (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses) review method, and its searches encompass sources such as Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar databases which, in result, identified 19 related studies. Furthermore, the reviewers segregated the factors into four major domains which include value, subjective norm, perceived behavioural control and knowledge. The results of this review demonstrate that most customers in the emerging countries have already experienced a growing interest in sustainable apparel with a strong development of knowledge, great concern, values and social circle. In sum, this systematic literature review provides an insightful information about sustainable apparel purchase behaviour and helps academicians, manufacturers and retailers to position and market their sustainable clothing brands.