Ecological footprint of your denim jeans: production knowledge and green consumerism

Every pair of denim jeans produced contributes 33.4 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere, consumes 3781 L of water, and occupies 12 m2 of land to support its production. The consumption patterns and consumption behaviour of consumers are both vital determinants of their environmental performance and impact. This paper examines the environmental concerns, production knowledge, and related cognitive measures of consumers by mapping their intentions in the process of buying denim jeans. Consumers of denim jeans in mainland China were taken as a sample to achieve our research objective. Specifically, 1392 respondents were quantitatively investigated. The empirical results indicate that production knowledge, the ascription of responsibility, buying attitude, and personal norms are dominant factors in explaining consumers' buying intentions when purchasing denim jeans. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between cognitive factors and buying intentions is mediated by affordability. This study highlights the immediate need to measure the denim industry's ecological footprint (during the production phase) and communicate this to critical industry stakeholders (i.e. macro-level forces, environmentalists, current and potential consumers). The intention is to redefine the purchasing behaviour of future consumers of denim jeans.