Embracing the Pre‐Loved: How Norms, Emotions, and Motives Shape Sustainable Recommerce Behavior

ABSTRACT Recommerce, the purchase of pre‐owned goods instead of new ones, offers a critical response to growing landfill accumulation, pollution, and resource depletion driven by overproduction, fast‐fashion, and short product lifecycles. Despite its promise for advancing circular consumption, recommerce remains constrained by consumer stigma and motivational ambiguity. This research integrates Norm Activation Model (NAM) with anticipated self‐conscious emotions to explain when and how consumers choose pre‐owned items and how these choices can be influenced. Across five complementary studies, survey‐based structural equation modeling (Study‐1a), a 2 × 2 experiment manipulating emotional (pride vs. guilt) and motivational (altruistic vs. egoistic) message framing (Study‐1b), a recall validation using naturally experienced emotions and motives (Study‐1c), and two field studies analyzing 1.43 million marketplace listings (Study‐2a) and 1050 public posts (Study‐2b), the findings reveal that (i) the NAM cascade (awareness → responsibility → personal norms) robustly predicts recommerce purchase intention; (ii) anticipated pride (stronger effect) and guilt operate downstream of personal norms, reinforcing intentions; (iii) perceived social sanctions (stigma/anticipated disapproval) weaken the norm–intention link; (iv) pride‐ and altruism‐framed appeals independently increase purchase intention, with a synergistic interaction; and (v) these same mechanisms generalize to field outcomes, where pride/altruism‐laden language predicts higher realized prices and greater organic engagement. Theoretically, the study reconciles affect–norm debates by positioning emotions as both mechanisms and actionable levers while identifying social sanctions as a critical boundary condition. Managerially, recommerce platforms can normalize adoption through pride‐affirming, other‐benefit messaging combined with visible quality assurance and community endorsement, thereby reducing stigma and translating moral obligation into sustained circular behavior.