The Role of Connectedness in Pro-Environmental Consumption of Fashionable Commodities

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This paper attempts to explore documented information about connectedness to nature, pro-environmental consumption, and linkages between two concepts, the linkages between connectedness and pro-environmental consumption in the first, and reflections on the complexities behind the definition of pro-environmental choice and the consumer decision-making in the second.  The well-presented paper confirms previous studies in this space. It would benefit the article if the authors could show the chronological distribution of articles considered in the final results.

Author Response

Reply to the reviews:

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable and constructive input on our manuscript. All suggested improvements have been considered and included in the revised version. Specific replies to the comments are provided below. Changes in the manuscript are highlighted in gray.

 

Reviewer A: This paper attempts to explore documented information about connectedness to nature, pro-environmental consumption, and linkages between two concepts, the linkages between connectedness and pro-environmental consumption in the first, and reflections on the complexities behind the definition of pro-environmental choice and the consumer decision-making in the second.  The well-presented paper confirms previous studies in this space. It would benefit the article if the authors could show the chronological distribution of articles considered in the final results.

Reply #1: We acknowledge the reviewer's suggestion, and now we have included in the manuscript a chronological distribution of the selected articles in a stacked column chart showing its relation to the overall number of yielded results per year of publication (Figure 1).

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript is well written. However, the reason you focus on connectedness to nature is unclear from the introduction. It establishes why the fashion industry is problematic and links consumerism with “disconnected individualism,” but what about that suggests connectedness to nature is a key concept to study? Likewise, you note that sustainability should not be thought of as a binary concept, but what does that have to do with connectedness to nature?

Also unclear is the nature of your “study” and why you chose that method. From the introduction, it sounds like you are reviewing case studies and then, separately, you conduct a systematic review of academic literature. What is the reason for those two approaches? The second method involved searches for several terms that seem unrelated to the purpose of your work. If you wish to understand connectedness to nature, why search for “psychoanalysis” and “awareness”? I agree, those terms are related to connectedness to nature, but if you search for them alone, then they will turn up a lot of literature unrelated to connectedness. And if you use them in combination with other terms, then you are probably restricting your search results too much.

The “results” offer an in-depth conceptualization of connectedness to nature. But I wonder how it does more than prior systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Is there a need for your study? You mentioned an interest in identifying “research gaps,” but you overlooked a lot of literature. Here are some of those analyses, for example:

Balundė et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019841925)

Barragan-Jason et al. (2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12852

Restall and Conrad (2015, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.05.022)

Schutte and Malouff (2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.034)

Sheffield et al. (2022, https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912494)

Whitburn et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13381)

I think for this work to be publishable you need explain clearly why your work offers a perspective that is both novel and theoretically or practically useful. The writing is very good, but the overall idea is not yet compelling.

Author Response

Reply to the reviews:

The authors wish to express their gratitude to the reviewers for their valuable and constructive input on our manuscript. All suggested improvements have been considered and included in the revised version. Specific replies to the comments are provided below. Changes in the manuscript are highlighted in grey.

 

Reviewer B: This manuscript is well written. However, the reason you focus on connectedness to nature is unclear from the introduction. It establishes why the fashion industry is problematic and links consumerism with “disconnected individualism,” but what about that suggests connectedness to nature is a key concept to study? Likewise, you note that sustainability should not be thought of as a binary concept, but what does that have to do with connectedness to nature?

Reply #2: Thank you for the comment. Parts of the introduction were reviewed to clarify the line of reasoning that backs up the aim of the research and, further on, the method. Connectedness to nature is a potential way to lower impulsive fashion purchases and increase consumer awareness, as mindfulness studies show. The complexity of sustainability (not being binary) is referred to because it requires consumer awareness. You can now find the following explanation in the manuscript: “The economic and political systems in which brands unravel their transglobal productions is complex. (…) Greenwashing is prevalent in the fashion industry [16], labelling a product as sustainable requires political awareness, and oversimplifying it as a false binary can compromise pro-environmental behaviour [17]. (…) Both the misinterpretation of harmful practices and the mistrust of good practices can jeopardize government’s efforts in tackling the climate crisis if the consumer is expected to choose consciously. However, consumers’ decision-making is rather automatic [24] and triggered by unconscious emotions [25] and often linked to impulsive buying within the fashion industry [5,26,27]. But mindfulness practices – related to increasing connectedness to nature [25–28] – have been shown to decrease automatic responses like impulsive purchases and increase consumers’ self-control [24,28,30]. Recent findings in psychology studies have also suggested that mindful consumption choices can be driven by higher states of consciousness and awareness [23–26].”

 

Also unclear is the nature of your “study” and why you chose that method. From the introduction, it sounds like you are reviewing case studies and then, separately, you conduct a systematic review of academic literature. What is the reason for those two approaches?

Reply #3: Regarding the review of non-governmental publications: they are the source for detailed data about the fashion sector, particularly as a business, but also as an intrinsic part of the economic and political panorama. It helps to track the subjectivities behind what has been called pro-environmental fashion in a more critical way (e.g. textile recycling is not necessarily good for the environment, it can even end up being more hazardous). Regarding the semi-systematic review: because connectedness to nature is scattered throughout literature, with diverse terminology and crossing multiple fields of study, we aim to categorize the concept (in its multiple terms under similar definitions), select the studies that link those terms to pro-environmental consumption (and fashion consumption) and verify how consistent the links of these studies are. The semi-systematic approach is adequate for this aim, according to Snyder’s (2019) suggestions. Furthermore, we found relevant to collect in the last column other variables or links that were considered in these studies (e.g., activism, voluntary simplicity, political participation). A new paragraph was included in the manuscript to resume why we chose this methodology. It goes as follows: “In the first stage of review, a total of 12 relevant reports and studies from international organizations (...) were assessed to contextualize the current call for more sustainable consumption of fashionables in an unsustainable economic and political system. (...) Because connectedness is a concept that is scattered throughout literature in many fields of study, in a second phase of the review, a semi-systematic method was applied as a strategy to map the linkages between connectedness and similar terms with pro-environmental behaviour in general, and pro-environmental fashion consumption in particular, as well as to identify knowledge gaps within the literature [39]. Unlike the systematic method, that has strict search strategies to synthetize findings of a particular question, the semi-systematic method is a literature review approach that maps theoretical themes across multiple science fields, and that is adequate for topics which have been conceptualized differently and studied by various groups of researchers [31,40].”

 

The second method involved searches for several terms that seem unrelated to the purpose of your work. If you wish to understand connectedness to nature, why search for “psychoanalysis” and “awareness”? I agree, those terms are related to connectedness to nature, but if you search for them alone, then they will turn up a lot of literature unrelated to connectedness. And if you use them in combination with other terms, then you are probably restricting your search results too much.

Reply #4: Because the semi-systematic section also lacked a detailed explanation of how the keywords were combined, a new table was included with three groups of terms. Words in column A were combined with words in column B, and words in column A were combined with words in column C. The authors have added in the manuscript: “Figure 1 shows the applied search strategy of using a combination of a first group of eight words related to the self (A) with a second group of 7 words related to pro-environmental behaviour (B) and/or a third group of words related to consumption in general and fashion in particular (C). Words in column A were combined with words in column B, and then with words in column C. Interchangeable combinations of the three columns were also searched.” Regarding the snowball method: firstly, it led us to relevant literature that was not delivered by the semi-systematic approach. Furthermore - because connectedness to nature is also a feeling (Coomber & Harré, 2021) - finding linkages between other feelings and pro-environmental consumption allowed us to establish a theoretical comparison in discussion and further research. E.g., both connectedness and guilt are positively related to pro-environmental behaviour, but why? Is the motivation selfless or self-centred? How relevant is the way individuals position their self (whether the concern is the common welfare, the individual’s liberation from guilt or the individual’s social status) in critically knowing what pro-environmental consumption is?

 

The “results” offer an in-depth conceptualization of connectedness to nature. But I wonder how it does more than prior systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Is there a need for your study?

Reply #5: This study responds to a research gap between connectedness and the consumption of fashionables (the semi-systematic review yielded just 1 publication linking fashion to connectedness), which are products essentially related to the users’ sense of self. Therefore, this study’s methodology raises fundamental questions beyond simple correlations between variables. i) we contextualize sustainable fashion in a systemically unsustainable economy, ii) we widen our analysis to include these publications’ secondary variables and mediators (in table 2’s column on the right), and iii) we stem from several definitions of connectedness to analyse how other ways to perceive the self impacts pro-environmental consumption.

 

You mentioned an interest in identifying “research gaps,” but you overlooked a lot of literature. Here are some of those analyses, for example:

• • Balundė et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019841925)

• • Barragan-Jason et al. (2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12852

• • Restall and Conrad (2015, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.05.022)

• • Schutte and Malouff (2018, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.01.034)

• • Sheffield et al. (2022, https://doi.org/10.3390/su141912494)

• • Whitburn et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1111/cobi.13381)

 

Reply #6: Thank you for the literature recommendations. Four of the suggested publications have been now included in the set of selected articles (now increasing the number of publications from 25 to 29). All the related sections to the additional three were updated: A) in the “2. Methodology” section; B) in Table 2, there are four more rows; C) in Figure 2, there are four more arrows; D) in Appendix A, there are four more references. Also, notice that we have included a graphic in the “2. Methodology” section, showing a chronological distribution of the selected 29 articles in a stacked column chart showing its relation to the overall number of yielded results per year of publication (Figure 1) to better explain the phased selection.

 

I think for this work to be publishable you need explain clearly why your work offers a perspective that is both novel and theoretically or practically useful. The writing is very good, but the overall idea is not yet compelling.

Reply #7: Thank you. All remarks were considered and incorporated to deliver a clearer and substantiated background for the aim and method.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank you for your detailed responses to my comments. I think you have taken reasonable steps to address my concerns. I am still not convinced this work addresses anything new except for discussing an old idea in a new context. The context alone does not create scientific novelty unless the phenomenon operates in a unique way in that context. Connectedness to nature is related to proenvironmental fashion consumption much in the same way it is related to other proenvironmental behaviors. At the same time, I suppose there is some value in showing that is the case. So I think it is okay for this work to be published in an MDPI journal.