When awareness backfires: activation and attenuation in fast fashion ethics

Purpose This study aims to address a persistent paradox in sustainable fashion: why rising consumer awareness of fast fashion’s environmental and labour harms fails to produce durable attitudinal resistance, particularly in structurally high-saturation, high-exposure market environments characterised by dense media intensity, accelerated trend cycles, and persistent sustainability discourse. Design/methodology/approach A three-wave longitudinal survey of fast-fashion consumers in East and Southeast Asia was conducted. Latent growth curve modelling and random-intercept cross-lagged panel models were applied to isolate within-person change and examine dynamic mediation and boundary-conditioned trajectories. Findings Dark-side awareness activates perceived risk and moral concern at early exposure stages, strengthening attitudinal resistance, but these effects attenuate as exposure accumulates. Risk appraisal and moral concern function as time-sensitive transmission mechanisms with declining marginal influence. Information saturation accelerates attenuation, generating non-monotonic resistance trajectories characterised by activation, plateau, and reversal. Originality/value This study advances a theory-revising contribution by reconceptualising consumer awareness as a dynamic moral regulation process rather than a stable antecedent. It challenges linear escalation assumptions embedded in sustainable consumption research and demonstrates that repeated exposure can suppress, rather than amplify, ethical resistance. By evidencing non-monotonic awareness effects in market environments defined by structurally high media intensity, accelerated trend cycles, and dense sustainability discourse, the study establishes temporal adaptation as a core explanatory mechanism absent from dominant cross-sectional models.