LESS IS MORE! WHEN AND WHY SUSTAINABLE FASHION PRODUCTS INFORMATION BACKFIRE

Sustainable fashion encompasses various practices, including environmental and social considerations, slow fashion, reuse, recycling, cruelty-free, and anti-consumption. While fashion brands emphasize sustainability in their corporate communications, they often lag in incorporating it into product-oriented messaging. Drawing from signaling theory and information processing, this research explores the impact of the amount of product-oriented sustainability information on consumer responses. Particularly, we propose that as the amount of sustainable information increases, negative consumers’ responses may emerge, challenging the effectiveness of sustainability signals. This effect can be explained by the phenomenon of information overload, which suggests that excessive information amount can surpass individuals' cognitive processing capacity, leading to decreased information processing and potentially negative outcomes. Through an exploratory content analysis, this ongoing research investigates product-oriented sustainability information on luxury and fast fashion brands' e-commerce platforms. Results indicate variations in the presentation of sustainable product attributes, with some brands allocating a significant portion of product information to sustainability. Based on these results, in the following steps (still in progress), this study will present a series of experiments to assess the effect of the amount of product-oriented sustainability information on consumers responses. We predict that amount of information on sustainable product attributes of fashion brands can backfire, leading to negative consumer responses. The findings suggest the need for fashion brands to carefully balance the amount of sustainability information to avoid information overload and ensure positive consumer responses. This study contributes to research on sustainability communications in the fashion context and research on consumer behavior. Moreover, this research underscores the evolving landscape of sustainable fashion communications and its implications for industry stakeholders.