Abstract:
This study investigated the effectiveness of a transformative interdisciplinary teaching unit on the clothing industry in changing participants’ knowledge, consideration, and consumption behaviours. The unit involved students from first year psychology and second year sociology courses. It consisted of four main aspects; watching The True Cost documentary - a documentary on the ethical and environmental implications of the clothing industry attending lectures a written assignment and finally attending an interdisciplinary lab involving both courses. A Pearson product-moment Correlation was run to investigate the various relationships between the variables, followed by a Repeated Measures ANOVA. Data analysis found that all forms of students’ knowledge and consideration measured regarding the environmental and ethical implication of the clothing industry saw a statistically significant increase from pre survey to post survey. However, Repeated Measures ANOVA showed that there was no statistically significant difference in students’ anticipated clothes purchasing behaviour from pre-survey to post-survey. It is argued this demonstrates a reduction of psychological distance through an increase in knowledge and materialistic value orientation through increased consideration, and that the attitude behaviour gap can explain non-significant results in anticipated behaviour change. In the long run, this change in knowledge and consideration may begin to change participants’ social groups and community attitudes towards fast fashion. It is argued that Higher Education providers are in a unique position to provide interdisciplinary teaching units to promote sustainability.