  The overconsumption of consumers under today's increasingly scarce natural
resources has overwhelmed the textile industry in middle-income countries, such
as Romania. It is becoming more and more essential to encourage sustainable
clothing consumption behaviors, such as purchasing recyclable clothes.
Notwithstanding there is a limited number of studies trying to understand the
intrinsic factors that motivate consumers' purchase intention toward
sustainable clothes in middle-income countries. Moreover, the effect of
consumers' environmental knowledge on determining their purchase intention of
sustainable clothes remains understudied. Consequently, the purpose of this
paper is to make a significant contribution to the sustainable consumption
literature by providing a consolidated framework that explores the behavioral
factors inclining Romanian consumers' purchase intention towards sustainable
clothes. The foundation of this study combines consumers' social value
orientation and the theory of planned behavior. the partial least square path
modelling procedure was used to analyze the data of 1,018 Romanian respondents.
The findings of this study show that altruistic value orientation, subjective
norms, and sustainable attitudes have a positive effect on Romanian consumers'
purchase intention of sustainable clothing. Thus, these insights provide
essential practical implications of advocating for the consumption of
sustainable clothes along with useful guidelines for practitioners in the
textile industry among middle-income countries, especially in Romania, to
reduce overconsumption.
