Sustainability in luxury: insights from Twitter activities

Abstract

ABSTRACT Sustainability presents one of the most pressing challenges across different industries, especially for luxury brands. This study reveals the role of sustainability in luxury consumption by collecting and analyzing data from over half a million Tweets with 762 sustainability luxury consumption hashtags. Sustainability’s importance in online discussion is steadily increasing. Using balance theory, we combined sentiment and text mining to decrypt and reveal online audience’s perceptions of sustainable luxury. The findings highlight what online public considers sustainable, the importance of these perceptions for specific sectors of the luxury industry, and which emotions sustainable luxury perceptions trigger. We reveal online audience’s sentiments in the form of opinions, evaluations, and emotions toward sustainable luxury. This research serves as a critical exploration of the much-needed alignment between luxury and sustainability. This work aids not only scholars but also luxury brand managers in their aim to comprehend and keep pace with the increasing importance of sustainability in the luxury sector.