Fast fashion or clean clothes? Evaluating consumer demand for ethically sourced apparel

Abstract Consumers play an important role in regulating labor rights in global supply chains, either by punishing companies that violate labor rights or rewarding those that market fair labor practices. There is, however, currently limited understanding of how consumer demand can be effectively harnessed to protect freedom of association and collective bargaining (FACB) rights in garment-exporting countries. Through a series of conjoint experiments, we test the strength of consumer demand for FACB rights relative to other labor and environmental standards, and manipulate price and information frames to analyze the extent to which a business case exists to promote FACB rights. We find that consumers display willingness to pay premiums for various ethical labels around labor protections, indicating a business case for promoting ethical labor standards in supply chains. However, we also find that consumer demand for certain labor rights—including FACB rights and payment of a living wage—can diminish considerably in the context of price increases, thus limiting the profits firms might accrue by marketing labor rights protections. Our results open up the black box of consumer demand for different labor standards and evaluate the different modes through which consumers can influence labor protections in the global economy.