Sustainable consumption in sports fashion – German runners’ preference and willingness to pay for more sustainable sports apparel

The sports apparel industry, as part of the apparel industry, has a high impact on the environment and society. But even though there is some empirical evidence that consumers in the sports sector favour more sustainable products and services, almost no studies scrutinizing consumers' preferences regarding sports apparel exist thus far. To fill this gap, this study analyses the relevance of sustainability for German runners when buying sports apparel. Specifically, it scrutinizes how different levels of environmental (ES) and social sustainability (SS) affect their preference and willingness to pay (WTP) for functional T-shirts.

This is done with a choice-based conjoint analysis (CBC) that uses 1000 data sets that were collected via a panel survey. The results show that, on average, additional units of ES and SS provide additional utility for German runners, who also indicated a steadily increasing WTP for higher sustainability. These insights have numerous implications not only for academia but also for managerial contexts and show that the runners generally are willing to support the development towards more sustainable sports fashion by tolerating higher prices. Furthermore, the findings make it clear that unified scoring systems for sustainable sports apparel could be advantageous for customers and manufacturers.