The norm-driven consumption cycle: A multilevel sustainability systems framework for explaining clothing demand and environmental impact in fast fashion

Abstract

Despite growing attention to cleaner production, circular economy strategies and sustainable consumption, the environmental impacts of the global fashion industry continue to increase as clothing production, consumption and material throughput expand. Existing research has generated important explanations of production systems, consumer behaviour, sociocultural processes and environmental justice. However, these complementary perspectives are typically examined separately, limiting understanding of how their underlying mechanisms interact to generate sustained growth in clothing demand. This paper develops the Norm-Driven Consumption Cycle (NDCC), an evidence-informed multilevel sustainability systems framework that integrates complementary explanations into a coherent account of high-throughput clothing consumption. The framework proposes four proposition-generating mechanisms linking the institutional production and communication of clothing-related appearance meanings, social evaluation and behavioural adaptation, market and production-system amplification, and environmental pressures together with their unequal distribution across global value chains. Drawing on interdisciplinary empirical evidence, the paper formulates four empirically testable propositions and conceptualises clothing demand as an emergent property of interacting institutional, behavioural, market and production systems rather than the outcome of isolated consumer preferences or production processes. More broadly, the framework demonstrates how integrating complementary explanations across disciplinary boundaries can reveal system-level mechanisms that remain obscured when individual components are examined in isolation. The NDCC therefore provides a foundation for future longitudinal, comparative and multilevel research while suggesting that sustainability transitions require governance not only of production systems and consumer behaviour but also of the institutional, communication and market systems through which clothing demand is continually generated and reinforced.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Sustainable Futures, 2026 · DOI ↗