Extending Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB): Cultural Inheritance and Craft Fragility in Pakistan’s Upcycled Fashion Movement

Across Pakistan's creative capitals of Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad, a quiet but profound shift is taking place as emerging designers repurpose discarded and reclaimed textiles into outfits with renewed worth and purpose a method known as upcycled apparel design. To explain what motivates this conduct, this research draws on Ajzen's Theory of Planned conduct, exploring how designers' attitudes, the social norms around them, and their sense of control over the practice come together to determine their purpose to upcycle. The study reveals a rich and frequently unexpected picture thru 30 in-depth interviews with designers and a thorough thematic analysis: designers' attitudes toward upcycling are deeply rooted in inherited craft traditions passed down thru generations, giving the practice a distinct moral and cultural weight, rather than in trendy sustainability language. At the same time, social perceptions remain divided while some families still identify reused materials with financial difficulty, a newer generation of design-school graduates is redefining sustainability as a badge of professional competence and artistic difference. Yet even with great desire and shifting perceptions, designers confront genuine challenges to putting their intentions into effect, particularly a fragmented supply chain for waste materials and a decreasing pool of craftspeople with the specialist skills needed to work with salvaged fabrics. Beyond the three primary motivations, the research reveals two additional forces affecting this environment the pull of cultural legacy and the fragility of the living craft infrastructure that upcycling depends on offering unique dimensions to extend how we interpret sustainable design behaviour. Together, these insights provide one of the first grounded, in-depth accounts of how Pakistani designers incorporate belief, tradition, and constraint into everyday practice, with important implications for how design education is taught, artisan communities are supported, and future textile-waste systems can be built.