Acceptability for animal-derived and vegan alternative materials: fur, down, leather, silk, wool, and their alternatives

ABSTRACT

This study aimed to examine changes in public discourse and attitude toward animal-derived and vegan alternative materials and to confirm the acceptability of vegan fashion materials. Vegan alternative materials for animal-derived materials (fur, down, leather, silk, and wool) were selected based on actual internet search keyword volume. A total of 313,618 tweets were collected, which were about individual materials. Sentiment analysis was binary classified using a deep learning-based BERT model. Structural indicators of the discourse network were collected, and correlation analysis was conducted between changes in network structural indicators and changes in consumer attitudes. Consumers’ attitudes were different even with the same animal-derived or artificial-based material. In the application of vegan fashion, wellon and polyester/acrylic were the most appropriate materials in vegan fashion, and fur was the most challenging material. This study explains vegan fashion materials’ challenges and suggests practical marketing strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Vegan materials
• vegan fashion
• deep learning
• sentiment analysis
• network analysis

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2024.2382049)