The many faces of sustainable fashion: how CSR cues and perceived luxury influence consumer behavior
Creators: name: Ranzini, G.
name: Lopes, A.I.
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: As the impact of climate change becomes evident, more consumers pay attention to product sustainability, identifying in (lack of) consumption one of the most impactful individual actions. Overall, consumers are not just positive towards efforts in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but they also provide more positive evaluation of CSR products, and show willingness to pay more for sustainable brands (e.g., Carvalho et al., 2010). <br> Consumers expect companies to show evidence of different types of sustainability characterised, for example, by efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their operations, or by a fairer treatment of their workers (Kong et al., 2021). CSR communication targeting only one of such domains, as is realistic, puts potential consumers in a conflict of priorities; for example, whether a consumer is more likely to purchase the sweater produced under fair working conditions, or the one guaranteed to be carbon-neutral. The economic sustainability of the brand, i.e., price-convenience for the consumer, might also influence decision making. Therefore, approaching sustainability communication within the fashion industry requires a consideration for the value of luxury. Among fashion goods, luxury is perceived as a cue of higher quality product, in the context of which consumers perceive sustainability as less of a priority because of fixed-sum reasoning, i.e., resources allocated to CSR are perceived to be removed from somewhere else in the production, leading to a lesser product (Janssen et al., 2017). Luxury fashion products are also less connected, in perception, to the negative consequences of mass production commonly associated with cheaper apparel, despite evidence of the opposite. For these reasons, this work posits to analyse the role of different kinds of sustainability communication for luxury and non-luxury brands on consumers' purchasing intention and eWOM intention. For this purpose, we conducted 4 (sustainability message: environmental, economic, social, and control) x 2 (Luxury vs Non-Luxury) within-participant experimental design. Participants (N=220) viewed eight stimuli depicting the same sweatshirtAfter each stimulus, participants were asked if they would consider purchasing the product or promoting it online (eWOM intention). <br> Repeated Measures ANOVAs tested the hypothesis that the presence of a sustainability message (environmental, economic, or social) led to higher purchasing intention compared to control. For both purchase intention and eWOM intention, Mauchly's test revealed a violation of sphericity . Degrees of freedom were corrected using the Huynh-Feldt estimate of sphericity in further analyses. Sustainability messages significantly predicted purchase intention F(3, 219)=10.73, p&lt;0.001, ηp2 = .050; pair-wise comparisons suggested that environmental and social messaging led to higher purchase intention than the control, but not economical (see Table 1). The luxury of the depicted stimulus also predicted purchase intention F(1, 219)=8.0, p&lt;0.01, ηp2 = .035. No significant interaction effect was found between CSR and luxury of the stimuli. Sustainability messages significantly predicted eWOM F(3, 220)=8.53, p&lt;0.001, ηp2 = .037; pair-wise comparisons suggested that each CSR condition led to higher eWOM than the control (see Table 1). The luxury of the depicted stimulus also predicted eWOM F(1, 220)=9.2, p&lt;0.01, ηp2 = .04. No significant interaction effect was found between CSR and luxury of the stimuli. <br> Table 1: <br> Sustainability Communication ECO (-Con) ENV (-Con) SOC (-Con)<br> Mean SD. Mean SD. Mean SD<br> Purchasing Intention. .06 .60 .23*** .79. .22*** .83<br> e-WOM. 09* .59 .16*** .76 .21*** .83 The results of this study show that the presence of a sustainability message (of any kind) leads to higher purchasing intention than not including a sustainability message - however differences between the kinds of sustainability are minimal.<br> For both purchase intention and eWOM intention, the luxury of the sweatshirt played a role in consumers’ intentions. However there was no significant interplay of sustainability message and luxury, i.e., consumers were not more or less willing to buy a luxury good because it included a CSR message. This sheds light into CSR research and practice showing that it is important to communicate CSR, regardless of the type of sustainable initiative; this remains true regardless of the type of brand (luxury vs. non-luxury). <br> References: Carvalho, S. W., Sen, S., de Oliveira Mota, M., &amp; de Lima, R. C. (2010). Consumer reactions to CSR: A Brazilian perspective. Journal of Business Ethics, 91(2), 291-310.<br> Janssen, C., Vanhamme, J., &amp; Leblanc, S. (2017). Should luxury brands say it out loud? Brand conspicuousness and consumer perceptions of responsible luxury. Journal of Business Research, 77, 167-174.<br> Kong, L., Sial, M. S., Ahmad, N., Sehleanu, M., Li, Z., Zia-Ud-Din, M., &amp; Badulescu, D. (2021). CSR as a potential motivator to shape employees’ view towards nature for a sustainable workplace environment. Sustainability, 13(3), 1499.