The development of a scale for measuring voluntary simplistic clothing consumption in the South African emerging market context

Abstract

<p>This study's purpose was to develop a scale to enable investigation of voluntary simplistic clothing consumption in the South African emerging market context. Initial scale generation, purification, and subsequent validation procedures were followed. A pool of 22 items was included in a structured, self-administered questionnaire that was distributed among respondents from various gender, ethnic and age groups in Gauteng. The resulting data was split randomly into two data sets with one half used for scale purification (n = 501) and the other half for scale validation (n = 501). Purification procedures involved scrutiny of corrected item-total correlations and subsequent exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Further confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) produced a three-factor solution based on 12 items that parsimoniously represented three dimensions of voluntary simplistic consumption practices namely, supporting local, ethical clothing brands, preferring unique, handcrafted clothing and reducing clothing consumption. This factor solution was re-confirmed through subsequent CFA procedures.</p>