To rent or not to rent? Investigating consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear by analysing its drivers

Abstract

Motivated by an ambition to contribute to the understanding of apparel consumer behaviour in an access economy, this paper aims at investigating consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear by analyzing its drivers. A research model was created, compounded of seven underlying factors which were hypothesized to have an impact on consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear; namely identity-signalling behaviour, environmental advantages, economic advantages, word of mouth, e-word of mouth, product criteria and service criteria. Through survey data from 278 clothing consumers, the model was empirically assessed and structural equations modelling was used to test the hypotheses. The result gave insights into which factors that contributed to explaining consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear, where identity-signalling was the strongest predictor. Environmental advantages, product criteria, service criteria and eWoM also contributed to predicting consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear. Contrarily, economic advantages and WoM did however not significantly influence consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear. A modified model was discovered, were identity-signalling behaviour was found as a mediator of environmental advantages and consumers’ willingness to rent casual wear. The insights contribute to managerial implications with an apprehension of how to create price-, market-, and operational strategies for organisations involved with access economy business models.