The Sustainability Commitment-Implementation Gap in Textile, Apparel, and Fashion Industries: Insights from a Sectoral Business News Coverage Perspective

Abstract

The paper examines the sustainability commitment–implementation gap in Textile, Apparel, and Fashion (TAF) in-dustries by analyzing over 12,300 business media news articles published between 2019 and 2023. Using quantita-tive co-occurrence frequency metrics. We categorized communications as either forward-looking commitment an-nouncements or retrospective result reporting across defined sustainability indicators. The findings reveal a signif-icant imbalance: 83 % of sustainability-related coverage focused on announcing initiatives, commitments, or future targets, while only 27 % reported measurable outcomes or achievements. Specific, quantifiable metrics of environ-mental, economic, or social impact remained rare even within outcomes reporting. The findings suggest that sus-tainability communication in TAF industries remains more strongly oriented toward future sustainability commit-ments than toward implementation-related evidence and measurable sustainability outcomes. The study contributes to sustainability communication and organizational decoupling research by demonstrating how business media discourse may reflect imbalances between sustainability commitments and implementation-related sustainability practices in TAF industries.