Embargo Period
8-3-2027
Degree Name
MA in Sustainable Development
First Advisor
Joe Lanning
Second Advisor
Catia Magro
Abstract
The fashion industry has intensified climate change through its patterns of global overconsumption, high product turnover, and short product lifecycles. This is a result of a critical gap in supply-side and demand-side national governance. Emotional durability design (EDD) reveals itself as a promising framework for extending lifecycle and turnover rates; however, there has been little research on how governed policy can include emotional durability-focused labeling and design mechanisms to effectively nudge consumption patterns in young, socially driven adult consumers in the United States. This research explores the psychological, social, and material factors that shape emotional attachment and detachment throughout the garment life cycle among U.S. young adults (18–30), as well as how young adult consumers may respond to different potential policy-enforced labeling and design standards. Using a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, this research uses a national, virtual survey with semi-structured consumer and expert interviews to evaluate how design and labeling mechanisms affect consumer behavior. The conclusions of this research aim to connect behavioral science, design theory, and policy analysis to offer evidence-based recommendations for sufficiency-focused policies to tackle overconsumption patterns in the United States and other high-consumption regions. Additionally, this research hopes to further international dialogue on how to solve SDG12: Sustainable consumption and production by identifying possible pathways for the fashion industry to shift to lower-impact, circular-focused models that are aligned with the Earth's planetary boundaries.
Key Words: Emotional Durability, Sustainable Development, Fashion Policy, Sufficiency, Circular Supply Chains, Sustainability
Disciplines
Development Studies | Fashion Business
Recommended Citation
Crow, Chloe E., "Attachment to Action: How Consumer Attachment Can Inform Degrowth Policy in the Fast-Fashion Sector" (2026). Capstone Collection. 3358.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/capstones/3358