@article{6a59b813c0f54820a785fb8400008e4a,
title = "Refashioning second-hand clothes consumption through pleasure, pain, seduction, and conversion: a virtue ethics perspective",
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.",
keywords = "Virtue ethics, Moral development, Second-hand consumption, Charity shop, Sustainable fashion, Pleasure, Circular economy",
author = "Kristina Auxtova and Stephanie Schreven and Lucy Wishart",
year = "2024",
month = nov,
day = "23",
doi = "10.1007/s10551-024-05874-x",
language = "English",
journal = "Journal of Business Ethics",
issn = "0167-4544",
publisher = "Springer Netherlands",
}