Internet Applications for Vintage Shopping Supporting Sustainable Development: A Comparative Analysis in Selected Countries

Abstract

The primary objective of this article is to attempt to assess the role of ICT in shaping more environmentally friendly and sustainable consumer behaviour in buying, selling, exchanging and recycling clothes, shoes and accessories. The research questions were related to the impact of ICT technologies, particularly mobile applications and websites offering vintage items, on the development of sustainable behaviour related to online shopping and increasing awareness regarding environmentally friendly consumer behaviour. This research problem is particularly relevant given the economic, energy, political and environmental crises in selected countries: Poland, Spain and Turkey. The comparison was made at the turn of December 2022 and January 2023, in the situation of a deepening economic crisis in the examined countries, stimulated by progressive political crises, inflation and the war in Ukraine. The data were collected using a survey distributed using CAWI (Computer-Assisted Website Interview) technique on the servers of the Faculty of Management of the University of Warsaw. In total, there were 353 respondents who completed the entire survey, out of which 114 survey participants were from Poland, 151 from Türkiye and 88 from Spain. The limitation of the work was that the survey was conducted with the participation of the representatives of an academic environment and the results were used for a comparison of only three selected countries. Nevertheless, its innovation consists in the fact that the authors compare, for the first time in the literature, the opinions of respondents on Internet applications concerning supporting and shaping more environmentally friendly and sustainable consumer behaviour in culturally diverse countries, under different crisis conditions. The results of the conducted survey concerning clothing and footwear consumption can be useful for practitioners to point to possible strategies to raise consumer awareness and shape more sustainable consumer behaviour in culturally diverse countries located in different geographical regions using ICT technologies.