Research on the Public Comfort Cognition of Silk Fabrics for Garment---Base on the Survey Data from Hangzhou , China

As the traditional products with local characteristics in Hangzhou, silk has numerous excellent qualities. However, public cognition degree about the performance of silk fabrics remains unclear. In this paper, taking comfort as the entry point, the thesis retrieves seven indicators related to temperature comfort and contact comfort to develop silk fabrics comfort measurement scale based on traditional evaluation methods, and public comfort cognition of silk fabrics for garment is investigated through questionnaire. According to the results, the public have higher awareness to skin comfort and softness of silk fabrics, while have lower awareness to moisture absorption feature, heat conductivity and warmth retention property of silk fabrics; industry and experience in using exert a significant effect on their recognition, while gender, education background, occupation, and time length living in Hangzhou have no significant effect on cognition.

penetrability (moisture absorption and moisture liberation property), breathability, water permeability (water absorption property), warmth retention property (heat retaining property), heat conductivity, air containing, and water retaining property.Contact comfort includes the hand feelings, antistatic property, and cold-hot sensation of fabrics.To be sure, silk fabrics could bring about intense psychological comfort to people out of its prominent gloss, texture and style.However, in view of its proximity to "clothing aesthetics", this part will be not explored in the thesis.
Therefore, the author retrieves seven measurement indicators including moisture absorption property, moisture liberation property, breathability, heat conductivity, warmth retention property, antistatic property, softness, skin comfort as the measurement indicators of silk fabrics comfort.

Verbal Description of Measurement Questions
Moisture absorption property refers to the ability for fiber material to absorb moisture in the gaseous environment which could be measured by fiber moisture regain.The most important factor used to regulate clothing microclimate is fiber moisture absorption and moisture liberation property (Yang, 2001, p. 11).Fiber with favorable moisture absorption property could more easily absorb the sweat discharged by human body and therefore regulating body temperature, removing moisture and creating comfort to human body.The convention moisture regain of silk fiber as around 10% symbolizes favorable moisture absorption performance.The questionnaire describes that "the silk fabric has favorable moisture absorption property" here.
Warmth retention property refers to the ability for fabrics to prevent heat dissipation which could be measured by specific heat coefficient or heat conductivity coefficient.Silk fiber has maximum specific heat and minimum heat conductivity in natural coefficient.Hence, silk fabric has better warmth retention property in winter and thermal insulation and heatstroke prevention function in summer (Yuan, Zhang, & Wu, 1987, pp. 13-18).Comparing with cotton fabrics, it has prominent advantage in warmth retention (Zhou, Zhang, & Wei, 2014, pp. 54-57).With the porosity as high as 70%, silk fiber has relatively favorable warmth retention performance.The questionnaire describes that "the silk fabric has favorable heat conductivity and warmth retention property and makes people feel warm in winter and cool in summer".
Relative to moisture absorption property, moisture liberation property refers to the ability for fiber material to emit vaporous water.Out of its excellent moisture liberation property, silk fabric has good moisture absorption, fast moisture liberation, and large water regain performance (Yuan, Zhang, & Wu, 1987, pp. 13-18).The questionnaire describes that "the silk fabric does not stick to the body in summer due to its ideal moisture liberation property".
Permeability affects the ventilation of clothing (Ke & Li, 2015, pp. 164-170) and refers to the performance for gas molecule to permeate into the fabrics.It is often expressed by air permeability.Fabrics structure and fiber material could affect fabrics breathability.Comparing with most fiber clothing, the questionnaire describes that "silk cloth has favorable breathability".Various parameters of real silk thermal comfort all remain at the optimal level (Li & Jiang, 1994, pp. 44-50).
Antistatic property could be measured by mass specific resistance.Fiber with poor moisture absorption performance usually has higher mass specific resistance.Fiber friction easily produces static electricity, and forces the fabrics to absorb ash and easily turn dirty.The entanglement of fabrics and the stickiness between fabrics and skin hinder the movement of human body (Wu, 2009, p. 40).Such fabric has poor contact comfort.Silk fiber has favorable moisture absorption and antistatic performance.The questionnaire describes that "the silk fabric has excellent antistatic property".
Softness is resulted from the stiffness effect of fiber, and specifically speaking, the fitness of fiber in root.In daily life, people could measure the softness by hand feelings.Silk fiber is the finest one among all natural fibers and silk fiber fabric has delicate, smooth and comfortable tactile sense.The questionnaire describes that "the silk fabric has soft, smooth and flexible tactile sense".
Skin comfort is a relatively comprehensive concept.It not only includes the contact comfort between fabric and skin, but also covers thermal-wet comfort.Silk fiber is kind of natural protein fiber born from silkworm spinning.With PH value ranging between 6 and 6.5, silk fiber feels fine, tender and smooth like human skin.Consequently, it impresses people with tactile comfort.At the same time, in proximity to the chemical components of human skin, silk fiber contains 18 amino acid required by the human body (Yao, 2003, pp. 94-97).Out of its fine, smooth and comfortable tactile sense, silk fiber has good affinity with human skin (Yang, 2001, pp. 18-21).The questionnaire describes that "silk fabric has favorable skin affinity and comfortable tactile sense".
In combination with above measurement questions, the thesis follows Lickert five-level scale to form a cognition assessment scale for silk fabrics comfort (shown in Table 1).

Scale Reliability Analysis
This research adopts Cronbach internal consistency coefficient (α coefficient) to analyze indicator reliability.Cronbach's α value as 0.7 in the range of low reliability should be denied in use.As indicated by the reliability analysis results targeted at small sample, α coefficient in the research data as 0.893 is obviously above 0.7, which proves the relatively high reliability of the questionnaire in general.

Research Methods and Principles
Based on personal cognition subjective assessment method, this research firstly retrieves relevant indicators concerning silk fabrics comfort performance to develop the measurement scale and compile the questionnaire, subsequently resorts to questionnaire investigation to collect standard quantitative data and analyze the research results by way of mathematical statistics method, and eventually finds possible statistical law or phenomena in need of attention or further discussion in quantity.

Questionnaire Design
The questionnaire is composed of two parts.The part designs single choice structural questions from the eight aspects of respondents' demographic characteristics, including gender, age, education background, economic income, occupation type, duration in Hangzhou, industry, and silk clothing purchase or use experience.The second part designs single choice questions to inquire respondents' understanding about the description of all indicators related to silk fabrics comfort with Likert five-level scale.

Method and Principle
For conducting statistical analysis on the investigation results, the thesis marks respondents' cognition to all indicators of silk fabrics comfort (including "totally do not understand", "do not understand too much", "uncertain", "basically understand", "understand well") by 1,2,3,4,5 and accordingly derives the cognition point S ij of respondent i to every silk fabrics comfort j indicator, and calculates individual cognition degree S i , average single item cognition degree of overall samples MS j and average cognition degree MS.Here is the formula.
Statistical software SPSS19.0 is applied for the input and analysis of questionnaire data (Rong, 2012, p. 271-280).Relevant data have been introduced to EXCEL2013 for drawing. ass.ccsenet.

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Table 1 .
Cognitive Assessment for Silk Fabric Comfort