Addressing Sustainability in Fashion Through Goal Frames and the Theory of Planned Behavior Perspectives

The throwaway fast fashion culture leads to increasing wasteful consumption and the dwindling of the world’s natural resources. Thus, it has become apparent that for the good of the environment, consumers need to decrease frequency of buying clothes as a form of pro-environmental behavior (PEB). By linking the Theory of Planned Behavior and Goal-Framing Theory, this study determined factors that can encourage consumers towards PEB performance as well as the influence of goal frames on these factors. This study also explored how consumers’ clothing involvement moderates the effectiveness of these goal frames. Experiments with 350 female respondents were conducted. Results showed that attitude was significantly influenced by environment-frame, while subjective norms was influenced both by environment-frame and image-frame. Results also established a moderating effect of clothing involvement due to enjoyment on the influence of image-frame on subjective norms. The implications in the field of environmental communications were also discussed.