Traditional Chinese clothing embodies classical philosophy and ancient civilization through its cultural elements (Zhang et al., 2023), allowing consumers to perceive the cultural richness and historical significance of the garments. However, to thrive in a competitive market and adapt to contemporary preferences, traditional clothing must cater to modern preferences. Hanfu is the traditional dress of Han, the largest ethnic group in China. The Hanfu garment style encompasses the essence of China’s 5,000-year-old Huaxia civilization and embodies the fundamental ideas and humanistic spirit of Chinese culture (Zhang et al., 2023). Of note, Hanfu has evolved, incorporating modern elements and transforming from a symbol of feudal conservatism to an emerging fashion trend (Wang et al., 2020; Yang, 2019). This presents an ideal opportunity to examine how the perceived authenticity and cultural compatibility of cultural elements in the design of Hanfu dress influence consumers’ purchase intention.

The impact of the authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility on consumption of cultural products has been explored in past research. The focus in most studies on authenticity of cultural elements has been on consumers’ purchase intention for food and beverage products (J.-H. Kim et al., 2020; Pelet et al., 2020), souvenirs (Fu et al., 2018; Xie et al., 2012), and global brands with Chinese elements (Laroche et al., 2021). These researchers reported finding a positive correlation between authenticity of cultural elements and consumers’ purchase intention using ordinary least squares and partial least squares structural equation modeling. However, the studies lack a detailed analysis of mechanisms. Therefore, our aim in the current study was to explain theoretically and empirically how consumers’ perception of the authenticity of cultural elements affects their purchase intention for cultural products.

In discussions on cultural compatibility, scholars often neglect the transition from the traditional to the modern context, focusing instead on cross-country, cross-nationality, or racial identity comparisons. Hence, our second objective was to analyze how cultural compatibility across time affects consumers’ purchase intention. This study will help guide governments in cross-temporal cultural integration to boost domestic demand for cultural products.

Social identity theory suggests that when comparisons are made between in-groups and out-groups, comparisons that are favorable to the in-group help the group members to maintain a positive social identity (Dietz-Uhler & Murrell, 1998). An in-group’s unique symbols can strengthen group members’ social identity (Pratt & Rafaeli, 1997; Schatz & Lavine, 2007). In the context of the design of Hanfu dress, the classical aesthetic elements like color, pattern, and shape can make Chinese consumers feel connected to Chinese civilization and Han culture (Zhang et al., 2023). This feeling may activate patriotism and ethnocentrism, two forms of expression of social identity (Carvalho et al., 2019), encouraging Hanfu purchases (Zeugner-Roth et al., 2015). Thus, in this study we examined the potential mediating effect of social identity in the relationship between consumers’ perceived authenticity of Hanfu’s cultural elements and their purchase intention. Consumers can be viewed as unique individuals by both members of their in-group and by out-groups, leading to the implementation of self-pursuit across three dimensions: self-presentation, self-enhancement, and self-promotion (Goffman, 1959; Schlenker & Pontari, 2000). Modern Hanfu designs that incorporate elements reflecting individual values have symbolic and expressive value beyond the utilitarian function of the garments, helping consumers align their self-values and present desired images. This makes Hanfu appealing to the mainstream market (Zhang et al., 2023). In addition to self-presentation, the cultural compatibility of Hanfu that results from the integration of traditional and modern cultural features makes people feel superior to others through a personal style that connects to traditional culture, increasing their self-enhancement (Cho et al., 2019; Gao et al., 2009). Moreover, consumers believe that the cultural compatibility of Hanfu garments with modern personalized design will promote others’ perception of their uniqueness (Zhang et al., 2023), allowing them to achieve positive evaluations and increasing their self-promotion. Thus, we examined the mediating effect of self-pursuit in the correlation between cultural compatibility and consumers’ purchase intention for Hanfu.

Collectivism is defined as a set of feelings, beliefs and behavioral intentions related to solidarity and concern for others, which stresses the perception of “we, us, our” (Hui, 1988), Consumers’ collectivist preference can strengthen their perception of the authenticity of cultural elements and their desire to buy the product (Hofstede & Usunier, 2003). However, collectivism often requires sacrificing personal goals, including being unique. When collectivists perceive cultural compatibility, they may perceive inconsistency between the individuality demonstrated in Hanfu and their in-group goals, potentially decreasing their purchase intention. Thus, we also investigated whether collectivism moderates the relationships between perceived authenticity of cultural elements, cultural compatibility, and purchase intention.

In sum, our aims in this study were to answer the following questions: (a) Do perceived authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility of Hanfu influence purchase intention? (b) Does social identity act as a mediator between perception of Hanfu’s cultural elements and consumers’ purchase intention? (c) Does self-pursuit mediate the relationship between Hanfu cultural compatibility and consumers’ purchase intention? (d) Does collectivism moderate the relationship between perception of authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility, and consumers’ purchase intention for Hanfu?

 

Consumers’ Perception of Authenticity of Cultural Elements and Purchase Intention

Mediating Role of Social Identity

Cultural Compatibility and Consumers’ Purchase Intention

Mediating Role of Self-Pursuit

Moderating Role of Collectivism

Method

Participants and Procedure

As the stimuli for the study, we selected 12 of the top-selling Hanfu sets that were then in stock, each of which was being sold at a similar price. Generally, the Hanfu set comprises a top, bottom skirt/pants, and coat. Choosing the best-selling styles enabled us to capture more accurately the characteristics of the trends currently popular in the Hanfu market, thereby allowing us to observe a representative psychological mechanism among consumers. In this survey, each participant was randomly assigned a set of two images, one depicting a Hanfu set for women and the other a set for men, in order to assess their perception of the authenticity of the cultural elements and cultural compatibility of Hanfu. Images were edited using Adobe Photoshop to obscure the models’ heads to reduce the influence of their appearance on participants’ evaluation. To facilitate accurate observation, the clothing was displayed frontally and some details of pattern and embroidery were provided in enlarged images.

China-wide participants completed the electronic survey anonymously on Wenjuanxing (https://www.wjx.cn/). We randomly selected 1,500 respondents from an online Hanfu discussion community with the assistance of community staff. Anybody interested in Hanfu could respond to the survey, regardless of whether they had previously purchased a Hanfu garment. The survey was conducted in the period between August and October 2022. The response rate was 93.35%, with 1,354 survey forms returned, of which 1,264 were valid. From the first wave (Sample 1) we included 207 valid surveys in an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), meeting the requirement of a minimum sample size suggested by Hair et al. (2018). Among the remaining 1,057 second-wave survey forms (Sample 2), 90 were excluded because of the short time of completion (38 samples) or because the same answer was given for most items (52 samples).

Table 1 shows the participant characteristics. There were more women than men, most respondents were aged under 35 years, and only a small group did not have a college degree. These characteristics are in line with the profile of Hanfu consumers provided by Zhang et al. (2023) and iiMedia data (2023), with both reporting that most Hanfu consumers are female, young, financially independent, and highly educated.

Measures

We made minor modifications to previously validated measurement instruments to ensure their appropriateness for this study. Authenticity of cultural elements was evaluated using an eight-item scale adapted from Laroche et al. (2021). Cultural compatibility was measured with three items derived from He and Wang’s (2017) study. Consumer patriotism was measured with a six-item scale based on Mong and Hoang (2018) and Mummendey et al. (2001), and consumer ethnocentrism was measured with a five-item scale validated by Shimp and Sharma (1987). In accordance with H.-W. Kim et al. (2012), self-presentation was assessed using a four-item scale. Self-enhancement was evaluated using a five-item scale from Cho et al. (2019); we adapted the items to evaluate our research context of Hanfu instead of ethnic-inspired design, as in the original study. A five-item scale developed by Bolino and Turnley (1999) was used to measure self-promotion. We used two items from Erez and Earley (1987) to measure collectivism. Finally, a five-item scale from Spears and Singh (2004) was used to evaluate purchase intention, with adaptations made to fit the specific context of purchase intention for Hanfu garments. The scale items are set out in the Appendix.

We translated items from scales developed in the English language into Chinese and then back-translated them with the help of two professional Chinese–English bilinguals who were familiar with the research topic. To improve measurement accuracy and clarity, we conducted a pretest with 20 participants who had the experience of purchasing Hanfu or had an interest in Hanfu. Respondents rated the items using a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree), except for cultural compatibility and purchase intention, for which the range was from −3 to +3 (with 0 indicating neutrality).

Results

Measurement Model Assessment

Following Podsakoff et al. (2003), we addressed the issue of common method variance by conducting Harman’s single-factor test with SPSS 26.0. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value was .87, indicating adequate sampling. Moreover, as shown in Table 2, the first factor explained 21.67% of the variance, which is lower than the cut-off value of 40%, indicating common method bias was not a significant concern in this study.

Subsequently, we conducted an exploratory factor analysis of Sample 1 (N1 = 207) and performed a single exploratory factor analysis with maximum variance on the measurement items of each latent variable. We removed nine items (see Table 3: CC3, CP1, CP5, CP6, SPre3, SE2, SE3, PI1, and PI3) that had factor loadings below .50, and performed an additional exploratory factor analysis. The Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin value exceeded .70, the eigenvalues of the nine factors were greater than 1, the cumulative interpretive variance accounted for more than 60% of the variance, loadings of all items were greater than .50 (Hair et al., 2018), and there was no obvious cross-loading.

Next, we performed a confirmatory factor analysis. Composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE) for each measure were examined. Table 3 shows that all variables except self-enhancement had Cronbach’s alpha values above .60, confirming acceptable reliability according to Kline (2023). All CR and AVE values exceeded .70 and .50, supporting the convergent validity of constructs.

As shown in Table 4, the square roots of the AVE values were greater than the correlations between the latent variables, confirming the variables’ discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2018). Additionally, a random variable was added to the dataset, with all latent variables considered independent variables and the random variable serving as the dependent variable. Using Smart-PLS 3.2.9, we performed a multiple regression analysis. The obtained variance inflation factor values were all less than the threshold value of 3.3 (Hair et al., 2018), indicating the absence of significant collinearity issues. Overall, the reliability and validity of the proposed research framework were confirmed.

Hypothesis Testing

As can be seen in Figure 2, among the control variables, gender and level of education significantly influenced purchase intention. For the independent variables, perception of authenticity of cultural elements directly affected purchase intention, supporting Hypothesis 1. Perception of authenticity of cultural elements had a positive impact on consumer patriotism, and consumers’ patriotism subsequently positively influenced their purchase intention. A bootstrapping analysis with 5,000 resamples and 95% confidence intervals confirmed the mediating effect of consumer patriotism, supporting Hypothesis 1a. Similarly, perception of the authenticity of cultural elements positively influenced consumer ethnocentrism, which, in turn, positively affected purchase intention. The mediation analysis revealed a positive indirect effect of perception of authenticity of cultural elements on purchase intention through consumer ethnocentrism, supporting Hypothesis 1b.

The results revealed that cultural compatibility had a positive impact on purchase intention, supporting Hypothesis 2. Cultural compatibility was also significantly associated with self-presentation, which had a significant and positive impact on purchase intention. The bootstrapping analysis showed a positive indirect effect of cultural compatibility on purchase intention through self-presentation, supporting Hypothesis 2a. Cultural compatibility also positively affected self-enhancement, which was positively connected to purchase intention.

The mediation analysis (see Table 5) revealed a significant mediating effect of self-enhancement, supporting Hypothesis 2b. Additionally, cultural compatibility positively influenced self-promotion, which was positively associated with purchase intention. Self-promotion played a mediating role between cultural compatibility and purchase intention, supporting Hypothesis 2c.

 

Figure 3 illustrates the moderating effects of collectivism with a simple slope analysis, which, in this case, is the regression of consumers’ purchase intention on the predictors of perceived authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility at the specific value of collectivism. The interaction term between collectivism and perceived authenticity of cultural elements had a significant impact on purchase intention. A higher value of collectivism indicates a steeper slope of the regression line between perceived authenticity of cultural elements and purchase intention, indicating that a stronger preference for collectivism positively moderated the relationship of perception of authenticity of cultural elements and purchase intention, supporting Hypothesis 3a. Conversely, the interaction term between cultural compatibility and collectivism had a negligible impact on consumers’ purchase intention. A stronger preference for collectivism did not indicate an increase or decrease in the slope of the regression line between cultural compatibility and purchase intention, so that Hypothesis 3b was not supported.

 

Discussion

Theoretical Implications

This study contributes to previous research by examining the influence of perceived authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility on Chinese consumers’ purchase intention in the context of Hanfu. Our findings for consumers’ perception of the authenticity of cultural elements of Hanfu garments are consistent with those of prior research conducted in other contexts, including the food and beverage industry (Pelet et al., 2020) and souvenirs (Fu et al., 2018; Xie et al., 2012).

Additionally, the positive relationship we found between cultural compatibility of Hanfu and consumers’ purchase intention is consistent with previous literature, such as the study by He and Wang (2017) concerning consumption of global brands in China, and also research by Laroche et al. (2021) related to the purchase intention of Chinese consumers and Chinese immigrants for global brands with Chinese elements. However, our study was different, in that we considered the emerging fashion trend of traditional culture and cultural compatibility from comparative historical perspectives. Our findings provide valuable evidence specific to East Asian culture and demonstrate the impact of cultural elements of designs on consumer behavior.

Our research also validates how social identity and self-pursuit mediate the association of both perceived authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility with purchase intention, which could be a paradigm for research related to consumption of cultural products. In line with the findings that social identity (Carvalho et al., 2019) and self-pursuit (Sirgy, 2018) positively influence consumers’ purchase intention, in our study we empirically examined social identity and self-pursuit as internal mechanisms (mediators) in the process of cultural product consumption. Our findings expand the application scenario of these driving factors and deepen understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship of perception of authenticity of cultural elements and cultural compatibility of a product with consumers’ purchase intention.

Our results in this study also show that collectivism positively moderates consumers’ perceived authenticity of cultural elements and their purchase intention, implicitly revealing how cultural value preferences affect consumers’ purchase intention for Hanfu garments. This finding expands the literature on cultural product consumption, in which researchers have focused on perception of authenticity of cultural elements or on cultural compatibility but have ignored consumers’ cultural value preferences. In this study we have enhanced understanding of consumer psychology and behavior, and our findings give managers a theoretical foundation for design, production, and marketing strategies for cultural products.

Moreover, we have provided empirical evidence that consumers’ purchase intention as affected by their perceived cultural compatibility is not moderated by their collectivism, and this is similar to the finding reported by Faqih and Jaradat (2015) that users’ adoption of mobile commerce technology and its predictors, such as perceived ease of use, are not moderated by collectivism level. Furthermore, Chen et al. (1998) claimed that although collectivism does encourage individuals to conceive goals associated with collectivism, it does not usually require individuals to abandon all their individual goals. Therefore, the impact of consumers’ cultural value preferences like collectivism or individualism on their behavioral intention toward certain products with cultural meaning should be investigated (Kang et al., 2012; Shavitt & Barnes, 2020).

Practical Implications

Our results show that both the perception of authenticity and compatibility of Hanfu garments can boost consumers’ behavioral intention, and that consumers react differently to the cultural attributes of a product. Thus, to inspire patriotism and ethnocentrism in target consumers, patterns or colors for products could be adopted from ancient paintings and historical books to emphasize traditional cultural and ethnic characteristics in detail. Moreover, according to our study findings, modified design, instead of replication of relics of ancient garments, could increase the purchase intention of those consumers whose goal is self-pursuit; hence, there should be a balance of modern and traditional design elements to encourage consumer self-pursuit.

Companies could also use different marketing strategies for consumers according to their cultural values. Our research shows that perceived authenticity of the cultural elements motivates collectivists to buy, but perceived cultural compatibility does not. Manufacturers can enhance the spatial and temporal connections between consumers and the cultural origin of products through cultural-source marketing strategies. Specifically, manufacturers could develop marketing strategies by stressing the cultural connotation of their products to arouse consumers’ perceived authenticity, thus reinforcing their purchase intention. Moreover, managers could use storytelling to create the consumption context, and cooperation with historic museums could be established. This will amplify the influence of the perceived authenticity of cultural elements on collectivist consumers’ purchase intention.

Limitations and Future Research Directions

First, cultural compatibility was initially defined as the conflict or congruence between traditional and modern cultures. Hanfu’s multidimensional cultural compatibility could be examined in further research, and this could help provide more specific information for the establishment of Hanfu design and marketing strategies. In addition, our survey was distributed to an online Hanfu discussion community, which could, to some extent, have constrained the scope of participants from the perspectives of income or prior experience of purchasing or understanding of Hanfu. Thus, for future research, more diverse samples could be collected to increase the generalizability of the research findings. In our study we also did not distinguish between Han people or non-Han participants. Hence, the potential influence of consumers’ ethnicity could be taken into account in future research. Furthermore, future studies could evaluate cultural compatibility in different contexts with empirical evidence. In culturally mixed situations, studying how consumers assess cultural compatibility would help marketers design strategies for incorporating modern or Western elements into traditional Chinese clothing.

Second, the measurement model was validated using multiple methods, but common method bias cannot be ruled out. Since some variables were constructed using information from the same source in our study, future studies could use experimental designs, multidimensional constructs, or different data sources (e.g., online reviews or other investigation data) to reduce common method bias (Fuller et al., 2016).

Appendix

Measures

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

Jiuping Xu, Business School, Sichuan University, Sichuan 610064, People’s Republic of China. Email: [email protected]