In the sustainable fashion space, we often talk about the “true cost” of cheap fashion.
By saying this, we’re communicating that the sticker prices of fast fashion items do not account for the negative externalities of their production, like the pollution of a city’s waterways caused by a textile dyeing facility’s processes.
When we consider these types of negative externalities, most products we buy don’t have a price tag that reflects their true cost.
That’s what can make the case for governments taxing goods that are less desirable for society, like cigarettes and fossil fuels. (We’re even starting to see glimmers of this for fast fashion, like France’s proposed fast fashion tax coupled with an incentive for more “sustainable” fashion.)
The Product Market Trap Theory
A team of economists recently explored the extent of negative externalities of social media platforms in a working paper, When Product Markets Become Collective Traps: The Case of Social Media.
They showed that non-users of social media can face negative spillover effects (or externalities) like the fear of missing out (FOMO). They might even experience social exclusion.
Interestingly, the research also indicates that a significant portion of social media users report deriving “negative utility” from using social media platforms, like Instagram or TikTok.
In other words, the people using the product directly are facing the negative externalities.
A significant portion of the social media using college students they surveyed said they would actually be willing to pay to get rid of the social media platforms that they use.
But on the flip side, if those social media users had to deactivate only their social media account but everyone else was still using it, these respondents would want to be paid.
Essentially these users wished — and were hypothetically willing to pay — for the social media platforms they use to be gone. Yet they continue to be drawn to these platforms because the people around them are using them.
Using social media as an illustration, the economics introduced a new term: “product market traps.”
They explain in this Freakonomics Radio episode that a product market trap is when people are willing to buy (or use) that product, but society as a whole would agree that “we’d be better off if the product didn’t exist.”
It’s easy to see that this could apply to many types of products. In fact the very next episode that came up in that podcast episode was fashion.
More specifically they spoke to luxury status-driven fashion products. (Think logo-laden handbags.)
The researchers found that 44% of buyers of these luxury fashion goods surveyed said they wished that those products didn’t exist in the first place and 70% of non-users wished those products didn’t exist.
Now of course this is just a survey, but it’s an interesting concept to consider.
The idea of a product market trap is a whole new paradigm to think about fashion, especially status-driven fashion purchases.
When nearly half of buyers of a product wish that the product they’re buying didn’t even exist at all and two thirds of non-buyers wish the same, we have to question: who does this really serve?
We certainly don’t see our environment or the workers producing those pieces benefitting from the production.
This survey was for status-driven luxury goods, but I think we might see a similar sentiment when it comes to all types of fashion brands, and trends or “it items” in general. Many often feel the need to replace “outdated” clothes or look “relevant”.
The (Social) Cost of Not Shopping
This economic idea of product market traps emphasizes that tackling fashion overconsumption isn’t just about addressing individual or irrational behavior.
After all, even individuals who’d prefer that status-driven luxury fashion goods didn’t even exist still buy them. Why?
I appreciated this assessment from one of the paper’s researchers:
“A lot of the discussion [around social media] has been on aspects of addiction or lack of self-control, which are very important. But we want to add another story to this which is even if the person is fully aware of the harm that it’s causing them, they might rationally choose to use it because it’s even costlier to be the one who’s not using it when everyone else is.
That’s the aspect of the trap. Which is ‘I know I don’t like being on Instagram, it makes me feel bad. But if I’m not, I’m not going to know what’s going on; I’m going to be isolated. So I have to be there even though I know it’s harmful.’
You don’t need to assume that users are naive or that they have self-control problems.
They could be fully rational and understand the harm, but the cost of being left out has become too high for them to actually not use the platform.”
And this explanation can certainly apply to everything from fast fashion to luxury fashion too.
When I was buying overpriced PINK or Abercrombie & Fitch plastered sweatshirts, it wasn’t that I wanted to be a walking billboard as much as I just did it because it felt like the cost of fitting in.
So as we think about changing fashion behaviors, let’s also consider the “rational” social cost calculations a person is subconsciously making when making a decision.
These Traps Are a Feature, Not A Bug
The “collective trap” we feel from social media is not an accident. As one of the paper’s economists points out on the Freakonomics Radio episode, one of the key reasons it’s so hard to leave Instagram is the integrated messaging feature. You wouldn’t just be leaving the updates in your feed, but you might also be leaving a group chat or a channel of communication with an acquaintance.
Just as social media platforms have invested heavily to grow their base to reach a scale that makes it difficult for people not to use the platform (social platforms rely on the “network effect”), fashion brands and ecomerce platforms have done something similar.
If you’re part of a certain subculture, you can probably name a few brands that everyone in that subculture knows, and wearing those brands might even be somewhat of a rite of passage.
Or think about when a brand leverages marketing to successfully transform a product into an “it item”, whether that’s a handbag or a running shoe.
Perhaps the shopper knows that the brand is wasteful, exploitative, and unsustainable and yet the cost of not buying what everyone else in your friend circle or running group is wearing feels too high to not participate.
Fashion as an industry thrives on creating the feeling that “everyone else has it, so I need it too.” It’s not an accident.
What Does This Mean for Slow Fashion?
If anything, the concept of a product market trap shows us that fashion overconsumption can’t only be thought of as an irrational behavior.
As we advocate for slower fashion practices, it may be helpful to step back and see that for some, that choice to buy that fast fashion item or status-driven luxury purchase can seem like a rational decision.
Not in the sense that it’s necessarily “right” or moral but in the sense that shoppers are coming to the decision through reasoning, even if it is subconscious.
Some of that reasoning could be the accessibility of fast fashion or the idea of making an investment in a luxury brand’s products. And some of that reasoning might also be the perceived (or real) social cost of not buying the hyped brand, the trendy style, or wearing a new dress that no one has seen before to a wedding.
We’ve probably all felt that cost at some point or another in our lives.
Are there any solutions we could consider?
1) Make your own slow fashion habits known as a way to (re)normalize these behaviors and give permission to those around you to also repeat their favorite outfits for years, thrift, or wear a visibly mended garment.
2) Power collective initiatives that shift cultural norms, like though harnessing celebrities and influencers’ impact on fashion consumption habits. RCGD Global has offered us some great examples here, like organizing campaigns that encourage celebrities to rewear or choose vintage or lower impact garments on the red carpet. (Though the organization has since shifted their efforts.)
3) Place sustainable fashion options as alternative ways to achieve the same goals. For example, peer-to-peer rental is a way to achieve that new-dress-for-every-occasion expectation and secondhand is always an option to wear those “it brands”. There are also some more sustainable brands that have become it brands. Think Reformation, Patagonia, and Veja. While imperfect, these 3 companies prove that sustainability-focused brands can be aspirational.
4) Leverage policy to regulate fashion’s more manipulative marketing tactics to help exploitative fashion feel more avoidable. Perhaps we further reign in influencer marketing; France has proposed banning advertising by ultra-fast fashion brands.
As with anything in sustainability or slow fashion, there are no quick fixes. But the more we understand about shopping behaviors, the better prepared we’ll be to truly address them.
