Impact of Self-Conscious Emotions on Engagement in Fashion Design Using Generative AI : Focusing on Guilt and Pride

The paradigmof the fashion industry has been shifting in recent years with the advent ofgenerative AI (Gen AI). While the introduction of Gen AI in fashion design wasexpected to enhance designers’ efficiency, its adoption has been slow in anindustry traditionally reliant on human intuition. Although consumer- perceptions of Gen AI have been studied in various contexts, researchinvestigating its actual use by practi- tioners in real-world work environments islacking. Therefore, this study aims to elucidate the pathways through whichdesigners’ internal emotions-pride and guilt-affect the implementation gap inadopting Gen AI. Surveys were conducted among individuals aged 20 to 39, withparticipants first exposed to short video stimuli illustrating the process ofdesigning new seasonal products using Gen AI from the perspective of fashiondesigners. The collected data were analyzed using AMOS 23.0. The results ofhypothesis testing and model analysis revealed that Gen AI exposure did notsignificantly affect respondents’ feelings of pride but did significantly influencetheir feelings of guilt. In the work environment, experience with Gen AIsignificantly affected both passive and active engagement with the technology.Pride was found to have a statistically significant positive impact on bothpassive and active engagement, whereas guilt was revealed to have asignificantly negative impact on both forms of engagement. This study, whichfocuses on the contrasting emotions experienced by practitioners, offers bothacademic and practical insights for the effective adoption of Gen AI in thefashion industry.