Sustainability and Social Responsibility

Identifying Sustainable Style Consumers with Decision Tree Predictive Model

Authors: Theresa Hyunjin Kwon (University of Tennessee) , Erin Cho (Parsons, The New School for Design) , Youn-Kyung Kim (University of Tennessee)

Abstract

Sustainable Style consumption (SSC) refers to “a distinctive mode of pursuing an individual style whose design one perceives classic and at the same time speaks about oneself.” Current study identifies pivotal factors that describe sustainable style consumers by creating a decision tree with RPART (recursive partitioning) method. A decision tree of SSC was built based on six pertinent lifestyle traits. Results indicated that the largest segment (19%) of high SSC group was explained by high level of fashion consciousness and high frugality. Although high fashion consciousness was regarded to be negatively associated with sustainable apparel consumption, our results show that high fashion consciousness, jointly with high frugality and high social responsibility, characterizes the high SSC segment. As high SSC consumers are more likely to purchase more environmental apparel and engage in sustainable apparel divestment, our decision tree model can be used to efficiently target and develop marketing strategies.

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How to Cite: Kwon, T. H. , Cho, E. & Kim, Y. (2016) “Identifying Sustainable Style Consumers with Decision Tree Predictive Model”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings. 73(1).