Abstract

The elderly population of Korea has been significantly increasing due to advances in public health, medical care, and quality of life. Social, economical influence of the elderly population has been increasing, too. Research regarding elderly people is important because many elderly people take care of their appearance and clothing, and clothing plays an important role in the elderly women's everyday life. This study investigated the life satisfaction, appearance satisfaction, and clothing behavior of women aged 55 years and older who were residents of Seoul. The results of this study are as followings: 1. The importance of various factors on clothing behavior is different. They are management, clothing importance, fashion indifference, information search and purchase planning, clothing dependence, status symbol, and conformity in order of the importance. 2. Age has a positive relationship with each of fashion indifference and clothing dependence, but a negative relationship with information search and purchase planning. 3. Age has a positive relationship with each of life satisfaction and allowance. 4. Appearance satisfaction is positively related with age, but is significantly related with neither allowance nor education. 5. There are positive relationships between life satisfaction and all clothing behavior factors except status symbol. 6. Appearance satisfaction are siginicantly correlated with management, conformity, clothing dependence, and clothing importance. And life satisfaction has more significant relationship with clothing behavior than appearance satisfaction does.

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