What's your fashion footprint? Understanding consumer behavior towards sustainable fashion

The fashion industry, a major contributor to global economic growth, is also one of the most environmentally damaging and socially exploitative industries worldwide. Responsible for approximately 10% of global carbon emissions and frequently associated with unethical labor practices, the industry’s fast fashion model has intensified problems of overproduction, overconsumption, and textile waste. In response, sustainable fashion has emerged as a potential alternative; however, despite increasing consumer awareness of sustainability issues, a persistent attitude–behavior gap remains in which consumers’ ethical intentions fail to consistently translate into purchasing behavior. This dissertation investigates the psychological, ethical, and evaluative mechanisms that shape consumer decision-making toward sustainable fashion. Grounded in Ajzen’s Theory of Planned Behavior and Thaler’s Acquisition–Transaction Utility Theory, the research adopts a two-study mixed-methods design to examine how sustainability awareness, ethical consumer literacy, moral accountability, and perceived purchase utility influence sustainable fashion consumption. Study 1 combines quantitative analysis of archival consumer survey data with a qualitative thematic synthesis of prior studies to explore the relationship between sustainability awareness and consumer attitudes and to identify key drivers shaping perceptions of sustainable fashion. The quantitative findings indicate that sustainability awareness significantly influences consumer attitudes toward sustainable practices but explains only part of the variance in sustainable purchasing behavior. The thematic synthesis further identifies several factors influencing attitudes and perceived value, including ethical accountability, brand trust, identity expression, price sensitivity, convenience, and perceptions of product utility. Building on these insights, Study 2 employs semi-structured interviews to examine how consumers navigate the transition from intention to action when making fashion purchasing decisions. The findings reveal that sustainable fashion consumption is not a linear outcome of positive attitudes but rather emerges through an ongoing process of interpretation, moral evaluation, and trade-off negotiation within complex marketplace environments. Ethical consumer literacy enables consumers to interpret sustainability claims and evaluate competing information, moral accountability activates a sense of responsibility to act on ethical concerns, and perceived purchase utility shapes the practical and emotional trade-offs that ultimately determine purchasing outcomes. This research contributes to the literature on sustainable consumption by reconceptualizing sustainable fashion decision-making as a layered interpretive process through which consumers construct meaning, evaluate moral implications, and negotiate practical constraints when attempting to align ethical intentions with marketplace behavior. The findings offer implications for marketers, educators, and policymakers seeking to reduce the attitude–behavior gap through improved transparency, consumer education, and strategies that enhance the perceived value and accessibility of sustainable fashion.