Over the past decade, the global apparel industry has witnessed an exponential growth of rental business. As consumers are increasingly aware of the environmental impact of over-consumption and garment waste, there is a new demand for apparel rental service as it helps reduce discarded garments to the landfill while satisfy consumers’ fashion needs This study examines the motivational factors that influence Generation Z consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions towards fashion rentals in China. Based on the theory of reasoned action, a survey was conducted with Generation Z consumers in mainland China. The findings suggested that economic benefits, ego defence, fashion orientation, experience value and sustainable value affect Chinese youngsters’ purchase intention to rent fashion-clothing. This empirical study contributes to a better understanding of the changing consumption attitudes and patterns of Generation Z consumers in China.

Over the past two decades, consumer moralism, or moralism about consumption in a broad sense, has received much academic attention in answer to the growing concern for fair-trade, corporate social responsibility, environmental sustainability, and other anti-consumption initiatives and movements (McGregor, 2006; Newholm and Shaw, 2007). This theoretical trajectory not only pay attention to how everyday consumption practice is shaped by and help shape certain sorts of ethical dispositions (Clive et al., 2005), but it also extends to the understanding of the intertwined relationship between morality, consumption, and consumers’ identity narratives (Thompson, 2011). While previous research has focused on understanding moral consumption as a politically and morally motivated collective practice (Luedicke et al., 2010; Thompson, 2007), limited research has been done on revealing how personal moral identity project institutionalize and contest the socio-cultural power structure through ascribing social meanings in consumption practice to legitimatize seemingly unethical behavior in the marketplace (Brace-Govan and Binary, 2010). This research concerned the creation and negotiation of moralistic identities among a group of young consumers in Hong Kong who engaged in counterfeit consumption. We focused on how consumers strategically appropriate moralistic meanings in their everyday counterfeit consumption, in which their identity work utilized these ‘alternative’ market resources to echoed with, or even reproduce, the entrenched Chinses social relationships and marketplace ideological conditions (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014; Luedicke et al., 2010).