SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article
Front. Sustain.
Sec. Sustainable Consumption
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsus.2025.1556835
This article is part of the Research TopicGlobal Excellence in Sustainability: EuropeView all 9 articles
Experience matters: a systematic review and research agenda on predictors to buy sustainable fashion
Provisionally accepted
- 1Research group Marketing & Customer Experience, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, Netherlands
- 2Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands, Netherlands
- 3Research Centre for Environmental Economics, Alfred-Weber-Institute for Economics, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
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Introduction: While consumers have become increasingly aware of the need for sustainability in fashion, many do not translate their intention to purchase sustainable fashion into actual behavior.Insights can be gained from those who have successfully transitioned from intention to behavior (i.e., experienced sustainable fashion consumers). Despite a substantial body of literature exploring predictors of sustainable fashion purchasing, a comprehensive view on how predictors of sustainable fashion purchasing vary between consumers with and without sustainable fashion experience is lacking.Methods: This paper reports a systematic literature review, analyzing 100 empirical articles on predictors of sustainable fashion purchasing among consumer samples with and without purchasing experience, identified from the Web of Science and Scopus databases.The review revealed that (I) environmental cognition, such as environmental awareness, knowledge, and perceived consumer effectiveness, occur most frequently as significant predictors for both groups; (II) subjective norms occur more frequently as significant predictors for general consumers than for experienced consumers; (III) habits occur more frequently as significant predictors for experienced consumers compared to general consumers; and (IV) experience can shift barriers into motivators.Discussion: This review highlights experience as a transformative factor for sustainable fashion purchasing, showing that as consumers gain experience, their attitudes evolve and influence decisions.It also emphasizes the potential of goal framing, suggesting that effective goal frames can encourage initial sustainable fashion purchases among general consumers. From a practical perspective, this review suggests that marketers and retailers should employ distinct tactics for first-time and experienced sustainable fashion consumers to effectively engage each group and enhance purchasing.
Keywords: consumer behavior change, sustainable fashion consumption, intention-behavior gap, Prior experience, Systematic Literature Review
Received: 10 Jan 2025; Accepted: 19 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Toebast-Wensink, Van Den Broek, Timmerman and Hekkert. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Annuska Toebast-Wensink, Research group Marketing & Customer Experience, Utrecht University of Applied Sciences, Utrecht, Netherlands
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.