My Clothes, My Precious: Psychological Ownership and Compulsive Fashion Hoarding in Fast and Regular Fashion

This research investigates how self-investment influences consumers’ psychological ownership and subsequently compulsive hoarding tendencies toward both fast fashion and conventional ``regular'' fashion items. Through a pre-registered online experiment (N = 434), our results show that high self-investment leads to stronger psychological ownership of fashion items, which in turn drives compulsive hoarding tendencies. When examining the three subdimensions of compulsive hoarding (clutter, difficulty discarding, excessive acquisition) separately, we also find that compared to regular fashion, fast fashion items lead to perceptions of more excessive clutter. In contrast, while regular fashion items may be perceived as associated with less clutter, they also trigger stronger reluctance and difficulty to discard. Our work contributes to the literature by being one of the first studies to empirically link psychological ownership to compulsive hoarding in a fashion consumption context. We also offer practical suggestions on tailored marketing initiatives and retail approaches to reduce fashion hoarding for both fast fashion and regular fashion consumption.