Perceptions and Resistance to Accept Smart Clothing: Moderating Effect of Consumer Innovativeness

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, the presented study regarding the identification of multiple obstacles arising from the adoption of smart clothing in your paper is very beneficial and interesting. However, the present manuscript has several areas that need to be completed. I would like to point out certain aspects:

1) In the article, I found a minor flaw, the elimination of which will help the text comprehensibility:

• Figure 1 shows a Research model, but for the Fashion innovativeness and the Technological innovativeness are the same hypothesis "H8 a-f" assigned. In contrast, line 412 refers to (Hypothesis 7, 8).

2) The whole article is based on a done study with 320 adult respondents, but a methodology of how this statistical sample was selected is not provided in the paper. The selection of a statistical sample is crucial as it can significantly affect the whole study's outcome. Can you please add it? Please also indicate how you addressed the respondents.

3) Recently, several smart protective clothing and healthcare smart textiles are soon launched to the market. For example, our industrial partners have launched a smart firefighter glove on the market in the past, and they are now launching a smart firefighting suit on the market. According to market studies, these two domains (smart protective clothing and healthcare smart textiles) have great growth potential in the coming years because they could have a high value for the consumer.  So why didn't you include "Safety innovativeness" and "Healthcare innovativeness" in your model? Can you please explain that?

4) The discussion should consider the role of the absence of standards for smart textiles and e-textiles in the area of perceived risks for consumers. Can this fact play a role? Is there any link with the lack of standards?

Although the first standards have now appeared, there are still really few of them: e.g. IPC-8921, Requirements for Woven and Knitted Electronic Textiles (E-Textiles) Integrated with Conductive Fibers, Conductive Yarns and/or Wires) or CEN EN 16812: 2016 Textiles and textile products - Electrically conductive textiles - Determination of the linear electrical resistance of conductive tracks.

5) In the article, I also lack a connection between the term "smart clothing" and commonly used terms such as smart textiles and e-textiles. Can you please add it to your paper?

Author Response

Thank you for your critical comment. Please check the attached file for details.

1. The assigned h8a-f under the fashion innovativeness of figure1 has been fixed to h7a-f.
2. We described how we recruited the respondents.
3. We agree with your opinion. Although not included in this study, we will conduct a study to find out whether the consumer's healthcare innovativeness or safety innovativeness affects the smart clothing resistance process in the future. I mentioned the limitation you pointed out in the conclusion and implications section.
4. We agree with your opinion. For many consumers, the judgment they want to trust mostly refers to safety standards. We mentioned the relationship between consumer's perceived risk and the lack of standards.
5. This study is a study on the perceptions and attitudes of general consumers about smart clothing, and used the term 'smart clothing,' not 'e-textiles' and 'smart textiles', to help consumers understand. We also wanted to help respondents understand smart clothing by defining it as clothing that combines IT technology with state-of-the-art textiles, materials, and technologies with a different concept from functional clothing.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This work describes a survey aiming to uncover the factors that prevent the wide adoption of smart clothing.

The authors should carefully proofread their manuscript so as to correct several syntax and grammar errors. For example, in many cases they refer to "innovative resistance" whereas they probably mean "innovation resistance".

The authors should consider enriching the article with some examples, so as to make it easier for the reader to understand their perspective. For example, in the following sentence: "consumers resist smart clothing if they perceive the function of smart clothing is not suitable for clothing or that there is a limit when it is implemented as clothing", provide an example of a non-suitable function for clothing.

Additionally, it would be beneficial to include indicative pictures of smart clothing and describe their functionality, so as to ensure that the reader has a clear understanding of what is being discussed. Based on this comment, the authors should elaborate on the fact that they did not include pictures and functionality description of some sample clothing so as to help the survey participants better visualize the products.

Regarding the methodology, the authors should describe how they recruited the participants and how they reached to 320 valid responses.

Finally, this article does not clearly state the hypotheses of the study, on the contrary, the word hypothesis firstly appears in section 4.1.

Some minor comments: 

- the sentence "clothing is also fast to adopt when society's moral standards, 143 norms, lifestyles, and aesthetics and is likely to be rejected otherwise" needs to be revised.
- "Recently, this uncertainty has been aggravated by the acceleration of the launch of new products with more advanced features with the development of state-of-the-art technologies." Should be revised to something like: "Recently,  with the development of state-of-the-art technologies, this uncertainty has been aggravated by the acceleration of the launch of new products with more advanced features."

Author Response

Thank you for your critical comment. As you pointed out, I corrected the incorrect English expression. Thank you for your help. Please check the attached file for details.

• To help readers better understand, we have described functions that are suitable and not suitable for smart clothing as examples.
• We described how we addressed the respondents and how this sample was selected.
• We clearly state the hypotheses in section 2. 

Author Response File: Author Response.docx