This study seeks to understand a piece of the second hand industry through looking at the consumer values of used clothing at thrift and consignment stores. The excess production of clothing results in textile waste that is dealt with in a variety of ways. After being accumulated and distributed internationally, “waste” clothing is once again distributed globally, however, maybe not as an equitable ideal. We bring attention to a sliver of this entire cycle. However, the consumers of secondhand store goods are active players in the relationship between used goods and who they are distributed to.
Through this study of values, we can see how incremental change, in this case, is incentivized through separate factors from the change being advocated for. Hedonic and economic values seem to be important in incentivizing people to support goods that are advertised and thought of as having ecological and social benefits. Our conclusions do not lead us to advocate for individualistic and consumeristic solutions to global issues, but instead have allowed us to consider more complicated dimensions of social change. These sort of unintended potential benefits important to consider in relation to activism and creating momentum for public movements. However, whether or not this leads to large scale changes is still left for debate. The values we identified were expressed on the unique online platform Yelp, which has the potential for organizations and consumers to interact. The trends found in consumer reviews on Yelp may influence the model of secondhand stores to prioritize hedonic values if the organizations are actively responding to their reviews. This may alter if and how they market second hand clothing.