Designing Sustainability with Emotions by Communities Who Care

Abstract

The fashion industry has been increasingly scrutinized for its environmentally damaging operations, but fashion companies are not implementing sustainable solutions fast enough to counterbalance the negative environmental and social impacts of the rapidly growing fashion industry. This netnographic study focused on exploring the emotion-based communication of a not-for-profit Facebook (FB) group in the natural setting of an online sharing platform for the implications of apparel sustainable practice. This study identified the emotional elements that are influential to sharing behavior in this FB community and captured the possibility for sustainable practice in everyday settings. The researcher served as a member that was a complete observer of the group and captured data (word for word content) for over one year. Thematic analysis was used to identify, analyze, and report themes in the data. No photos or personal identification was disclosed. Findings include group members having integrity make the online system of sharing work. Participating in their way to this group brought members the sense of autonomy and a cooperative spirit of kindness. The analysis found that the key factors of this group’s emotions to be trust, sincerity, empathy, compassion, benevolence, vulnerability, and sensitivity, and the members’ communicated emotions and the acts of generosity, reciprocity, gratitude, and altruism are associated with the sharing of apparel. These attitudes regarding sharing are in line with other studies that support emotions that can affect challenging social issues such as sustainability. This research aimed to not only identify the emotional elements of the online community but also capture the implication that those communicational elements have for understanding apparel sustainability in real-life practice.