“I want to be honest…but how much can I share?” : Sustainable influencing and experiences of moral residue

Abstract

Transparency is the cornerstone of social media influencing. Research has explored how influencers disclose commercial interests, yet little is known about influencers’ self-disclosure of private consumption. Building on the transparency management and moral hypocrisy literatures, this paper explores how sustainable influencers navigate moral dilemmas as they communicate about sustainability. Through interviews and analysis of media articles, we find that sustainable fashion influencers experience persistent emotional baggage that we frame as ‘moral residue’, in navigating three moral dilemmas related to (anti)consumption, (non)promotion, and (non)commercialization. To reconcile this, sustainable fashion influencers engage in transparency management, choosing between strategies of ‘confessing’, ‘concealing’ and/or ‘conning’. These strategies may inadvertently exacerbate moral hypocrisy, evidencing how sustainable influencers are locked in perpetual cycles of moral residue. In explicating the process and potential outcomes of managing transparency around moral dilemmas, we provide an intrapersonal view of moral hypocrisy and offer implications for theory and practice