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The article reports the findings of an empirical study among consumers, regarding the impact of physical, social, and psychological proximity on their engagement to the fair trade idea and purchasing behavior. Based on a random sample of 211 British and 112 Indian consumers and using structural equation modeling, it was found that high levels of physical, social, and psychological proximity leads to high consumer fair trade engagement. Moreover, consumer fair trade engagement was confirmed to have a positive impact on fair trade purchasing behavior. Furthermore, consumer empathic concern was found to positively moderate the association between proximity and consumer fair trade engagement, while the opposite was true with regard to consumer hypocrisy. Finally, consumer nationality was found to have a control effect on physical, social, and psychological proximity, with the latter felt stronger among Indian, as opposed to British consumers.

Extensive globalisation has presented several sustainability challenges highlighted in the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. These include the environmental impact of global product procurement and manufacturing and the irregular treatment of indigenous workers in developing countries. Thus, reshoring, defined as a firm's voluntary strategy to partially or totally relocate production to the home country, is gaining traction. However, most research on reshoring focuses on firms, leaving the consumers' perspective under-researched. Here, we examine British consumers' perspectives on reshoring to the UK and sustainability. By employing the theoretical lens of connectedness, anchored in attachment theory, we conducted 30 in-depth interviews using projective techniques and analysed the data using the constant comparison method. We found that consumers not only positively viewed their connectedness with the concept of reshoring from a sustainability perspective, but also appraised it from a global perspective, demonstrating empathy towards the host country. Further, they doubted corporations' motives regarding reshoring. Three theoretical dimensions emerged based on consumers' connectedness with reshoring and sustainability, specifically, supporting reshoring conditionally, inclusive reshoring, and doubting reshoring.

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