How fashion can achieve sustainable development through a circular economy and stakeholder engagement: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Despite the strong societal demand for circular fashion (CF) businesses, the literature lacks a contextualized understanding about what has been explored versus what has been underexplored in the current literature. Although the fashion supply chain involves many stakeholders, the majority of the literature discusses CF from the stance of internal stakeholders. Less is understood about the external stakeholders' perspective. To offer a holistic understanding about the CF traits (i.e., drivers, strategies, practices, barriers, and enablers) for all stakeholders, we have systematically reviewed the CF literature and integrated a stakeholder's perspective into this review process. Through content analysis, Study 1 shows the current trends in the CF literature and suggests avenues for future research. Through thematic analysis, Study 2 identifies the CF traits for all stakeholders, both internal and external. The results yielded a conceptual framework offering an integrated understanding about how fashion businesses can institute true circularity by engaging external stakeholders in their CF-related endeavors.

Toward a circular economy: Understanding consumers' moral stance on corporations' and individuals' responsibilities in creating a circular fashion economy

“…Indeed, in the fashion business, it is difficult to ensure a company's sustainability transparency and truly sustainable performance, despite its commitment toward increasing sustainability, because the fashion supply chain involves various members intertwined in the chain (e.g., suppliers, producers, and retailers) and the demand side of the value chain (e.g., consumers) (Varley, Roncha, Radclyffe‐Thomas, & Gee, 2018). In particular, considering that sustainable fashion business seeks to extend the use period of fashion products or keep the products in the value chain by recycling or reusing them, fashion businesses cannot perform truly sustainable actions without customers' commitment to share the moral responsibility for creating sustainability (Ki et al, 2020). For instance, although a fashion corporation (e.g., H&M) takes sustainability as its perfect moral duty and implements a strict take‐back program in all stores (i.e., an initiative to collect used clothing from consumers), the company cannot make its supply chain truly sustainable unless consumers accept the same perfect moral duty and return their unwanted clothes.…”

“…This illustrates the significant influence our daily fashion production and consumption practices have on the environment, society, and economy. However, because the industry is founded upon a wasteful economic system—the linear economy's “take‐make‐use‐throwaway” system, the industry has highly significant adverse effects such as environmental destruction, economic loss, and threats to human society (Ferasso, Beliaeva, Kraus, Clauss, & Ribeiro‐Soriano, 2020; Ki, Chong, & Ha‐Brookshire, 2020). In fashion's linear system, the volume of fashion production has almost doubled since 2002, whereas less than 1% of these materials are recycled into new clothing or other products (Ellen MacArthur Foundation [EMF], 2017).…”

“…Being aware of the societal need for the fashion industry to move away from a linear to a circular economy (Moktadir et al, 2020; Stewart & Niero, 2018), the industry has recently made tremendous plans and implementation strategies so that the fashion‐related economy can become more circular. In practice, circular fashion (CF) business strategies hinge on three principles (Ki et al, 2020). The first CF strategy is aimed at “designing out waste and pollution” during the production stage (EMF, 2017).…”

“…Despite the fashion industry's efforts to institute a CF economy, this industry is still lagging behind in its acceptance of a truly circular economy. A recent research study that systematically reviewed the contents of all the CF literature collected from the Scopus and Web of Science databases between 2015 and 2019 (Ki et al, 2020) ascribes this lag to two causes. First, the lack of scalable CF research has hindered the fashion industry's ability to increase its adoption of a truly circular economy.…”

“…Although academic research on CF has increased in the past 5 years, research on a circular economy focused on the fashion industry (59 articles) is not only far from saturated but largely exploratory in nature. The majority of the CF literature (71.2%) has focused on exploring fashion manufacturers' or fashion retailers' views or opinions about CF through interviews or case studies (Ki et al, 2020). Therefore, academic research that can provide empirical evidence on the relations between the perceptions, attitudes, and/or behaviors that were identified from these exploratory studies is needed to provide more practical insights for the development of CF business strategies.…”