Interpreting Sustainability in Design: How Design Cues Shape Evaluation in Symbolic Product Categories

ABSTRACT

The present research examines how consumers interpret visible manifestations of circular production and how these interpretations shape product evaluation in symbolic product categories. Prior research has primarily examined sustainability as an evaluative attribute, with comparatively less attention devoted to how sustainability cues embedded in product design are interpreted during product evaluation. Building on research on sustainability evaluation, symbolic consumption, design‐based inference, and creativity under constraint, this research proposes that visible sustainability cues evoke design‐related interpretive inferences—including perceived aesthetic burden, perceived designer authorship, and perceived symbolic novelty—that are integrated into judgments of design intentionality. These judgments, in turn, shape product evaluation, operationalized here as perceived fashionability. Across two experiments conducted in the context of luxury fashion, the findings indicate that sustainability‐related design cues do not exert a uniform influence on product evaluation. Instead, their effects depend on consumers' interpretations of those cues and the broader positioning context in which those interpretations occur. The findings also suggest that the proposed interpretive pathways differ modestly in their relative influence on product evaluation. By clarifying the interpretive process through which sustainability‐related design cues acquire evaluative meaning, this research advances understanding of sustainability evaluation in symbolic product categories. The findings further identify brand positioning as an important contextual boundary condition shaping this interpretive process.