Ecological Fashion Perspectives of the Green Generation: Examining Gen Z and Millennial attitudes towards the Swedish fashion industry's efforts to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine how young Swedish consumers appurtenant to Generation Z and the Millennial generation perceive the effort made by four leading Swedish fashion companies H&M, Lindex, Kappahl, and Gina Tricot to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases. Further, it explores the general attitudes that these generations hold toward the Swedish Fashion Industry’s approach to sustainable dev elopment. The study applies an explorative, quantitative approach using a survey to chart the attitudes in three areas: Transparency, Sustainable Development, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions. It also investigates the annual reports and sustainability reports of the studied companies to outline the greenhouse gas emissions and revenue between the years 2017 2021. To reach a deeper understanding of consumer attitudes the conceptualizations of e nvironmental d iscourses, w eak, and s trong s ustainability as well as e co m odernism were adopted into the analysis. The findings of the study reveal that younger generations tend to have generally low confidence in the sustainability practices of large Swedish fashion companies when it comes to all dimensions investigated. T his is discussed and traced back to a lapse in adapting to the consistently changing attitudes toward sustainability among different generations. The paper expands the scope for different understandings of sustainability and how it might be researched and applied in the future.