Refashioning second-hand clothes consumption through pleasure, pain, seduction, and conversion: a virtue ethics perspective

Kristina Auxtova (Lead / Corresponding author), Stephanie Schreven, Lucy Wishart

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Abstract

The fashion industry needs to become more circular, given the unsustainable levels of waste it produces. Our research empirically explores and theoretically develops how adopting a virtue ethics approach can encourage and support second-hand clothing consumption as a form of reuse and a way of practicing sustainability. Based on ethnographic interviews with consumers who shop in UK charity shops, our grounded theory study focuses on how consumers experience second-hand clothing consumption as constitutive of sources of (in)action that encourage or inhibit virtuous, sustainable behaviour. We find that pleasure and/or shame or guilt (pain) are key to enabling virtuous moral decision-making towards reuse and sustainability. We furthermore argue that seduction and conversion, hand in hand with pleasure, act as levers supporting such moral decision-making, mitigating aversions and wayward desires that obstruct good moral intentions to consume second-hand clothing. By engaging empirically with moral decision-making, our research theoretically advances scholarship on virtue ethics and second-hand clothing consumption, while contributing to an ethically informed vision of the circular economy. We conclude with implications for charity retail practices in support of circularity and sustainability informed by a virtue ethics perspective, as well as suggestions for future research.
Original languageEnglish
Number of pages19
JournalJournal of Business Ethics
Early online date23 Nov 2024
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 23 Nov 2024

Keywords

  • Virtue ethics
  • Moral development
  • Second-hand consumption
  • Charity shop
  • Sustainable fashion
  • Pleasure
  • Circular economy

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