Understanding Purchase Intentions Toward Food Waste Fashion: The Fashion Innovation Adoption Model (FIAM)

Food waste fashion—garments produced from agricultural and food industry by-products, such as fruit peels, coffee grounds, and grape marc—represents a radical yet understudied innovation within the circular economy. This study proposes the Fashion Innovation Adoption Model, a novel framework that organizes consumer adoption of fashion innovations across three hierarchical levels: a distal level comprising sociodemographic characteristics, an intermediate cognitive–evaluative level comprising consumer decision-making styles and functional product attribute evaluations, and a proximal psychosocial level comprising attitudes, static and dynamic social norms, and past fashion purchasing behavior. The model is applied for the first time to food waste fashion as a paradigmatic case of radical circular innovation in the textile sector. Hypotheses were tested via structural equation modeling on a sample of 396 Italian consumers. Purchase intention was directly predicted by attitudes, static and dynamic norms, and general fashion purchasing, whereas sustainable fashion purchasing showed no effect. Among product attributes, only sustainability information influenced both attitudes and intentions. Perfectionism and hedonism were positively associated with intention through sustainability information, while impulsivity and habit were negatively associated with intention. Sociodemographics influenced intention only indirectly, via cognitive and normative mechanisms. These findings reveal complex pathways linking psychological profiles and perceived product attributes to circular fashion adoption, with implications for communication strategies emphasizing sustainability information and targeting heterogeneous consumer motivations.