Balancing aesthetics and usefulness: how visual transformation influences consumers’ intention to use smart clothing

Abstract This study investigates how visual transformative (VT) smart clothing, garments that dynamically change color, pattern, or silhouette through integrated materials or embedded technological mechanisms, influences consumer adoption by examining its effects on perceived usefulness (PU), aesthetics (AES), hedonic motivation (HM), and social influence (SI). Drawing on TAM, UTAUT, and UTAUT2, we modeled VT as the independent variable, perceived aesthetics (AES), perceived usefulness (PU), hedonic motivation (HM), and social influence (SI) as mediators, and age (AGE), socio-cultural experience (SCE), technological experience (TE), and individual innovativeness (II) as moderators. An online survey of 350 Korean women aged 20–59 evaluated function-oriented versus expression-oriented smart clothing stimuli. Data were analyzed using correlation analysis, hierarchical regression, and PROCESS macro models. VT significantly increased AES but decreased PU, producing a negative total effect on intention to use via a suppression pattern in which the adverse PU pathway outweighed aesthetic gains. AES and PU significantly mediated the VT–intention relationship, whereas HM and SI did not, indicating that adoption of VT garments is driven primarily by functional and aesthetic judgments rather than hedonic or social processes. Moderated mediation analyses showed that AGE, SCE, and TE strengthened the PU–intention path, amplifying the negative indirect effect of VT among younger, culturally exposed, and technologically experienced consumers, while II exerted only a limited influence. These findings conceptualize visually transformative smart clothing as a distinct category whose acceptance depends on resolving tensions between expressive appearance and functional credibility, offering guidance for the design and communication of technology-embedded fashion.