Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Developing and validating scales to assess fashion organizations’ change-related effort toward the circular economy

---

Abstract

In the prevailing linear economic (LE) model, fashion organizations (including textile and apparel [T&A] organizations) have contributed substantially to environmental damage (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). This detrimental environmental damage has prompted calls to transition from the LE’s “take-make-waste” business model to a more sustainable, circular economic (CE) model that emphasizes “reuse and regeneration” (Legl, 2022). Among those calling for a shift to the CE are Chinese policymakers. As China’s fashion industry is the world’s largest producer and exporter of T&A (United Nations Comtrade, 2022; WTO, 2022), it contributes significantly to the nation’s air and water pollution. To address this issue, the Chinese government has made increasing “change-related efforts” toward the CE, including its stated goal to recycle 25% of all textile waste and produce 2.2 million tons of recycled fiber within the next two years (Choi, 2022) in order to combat the 26 million tons of used clothing being discarded every year (To & Kan, 2020). Due to this external pressure and government regulations, some fashion organizations have begun to adopt CE business models that consider clothing as a service rather than a product (e.g., rental clothing models), while others have begun to engage their customers in CE practices through take-back offers (e.g., a fashion organization takes or buys back its own garments; Ki et al., 2020). Despite these efforts, it still remains unclear whether Chinese fashion organizations have the intrinsic motivation to champion efforts to change toward the CE, which can translate into positive economic, environmental, and social outcomes. This led us to develop an important research question: “Are Chinese fashion organizations making tangible efforts to change toward the CE at their own will?” To answer this question, we drew on the theory of organizational readiness for change (ORC; Weiner, 2009) and the methodological framework of item response theory (IRT; Revicki et al., 2014) to develop and validate a context-specific scale that measures change-related effort toward the CE, tailored to Chinese fashion organizations given their key position in the fashion value chain.

Keywords: circular fashion, circular economy, change-related effort, scale development

How to Cite:

KI, C., Chong, S., Chenn, A., Wang, B. & Ha-Brookshire, J. E., (2024) “Developing and validating scales to assess fashion organizations’ change-related effort toward the circular economy”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 80(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.17131