Eco-Fashion Adoption in the UAE: Understanding Consumer Barriers and Motivational Factors

This paper explores the scope of eco-fashion and identifies the barriers and motivational factors to eco-fashion adoption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The key objective is to identify strategies that will influence consumers to perceive eco-fashion more favorably. A total of 20 participants were selected for the in-depth interviews. The two main barriers that surfaced from the interview data were lack of awareness and availability of eco-fashion clothing. Other noteworthy barriers that were identified were lack of brand association, higher cost of eco-fashion clothing, cheap and readily available fast fashion, an overload of information, boring and unattractive styles, no incentive to purchase eco-fashion and perceptions of poor quality. The main motivators were availability, awareness, celebrity and brand endorsements. In addition, brand, style, comfort, affordability, engaging marketing communications were other important motivators. This study for the first time examines the barriers and motivational factors of eco-fashion adoption in the UAE, as no study has been conducted even on related topics in the Middle East. Awareness was identified as one of the main barriers to eco-fashion adoption, which is a new finding owing to the geographical difference between the previous and the current studies.