Blockchain-enabled sustainability in second-hand luxury fashion.
A study of how blockchain-verified sustainability information changes electronic word-of-mouth and purchase commitment in the second-hand luxury market, comparing Vietnam and France.
What the study asked, and why.
This project examined how blockchain-enabled sustainability information shapes consumer responses in the second-hand luxury fashion market.
Using survey data from Vietnam and France, the study explored how different information qualities, particularly immutability, transparency, and clarity, influence trust, perceived sustainability value, blockchain-enabled electronic word-of-mouth, relationship commitment, and purchase intention.
How the study was built, in four steps.
Start broad, then find the real friction.
We began with sustainable fashion and the broad question of how technology might support more responsible consumption. The literature review narrowed that focus to the second-hand luxury market, where environmental value exists, but adoption remains constrained by authenticity risk, information asymmetry, and low-confidence verification.
The gap we settled on was how blockchain-enabled sustainability information shapes consumer trust, perceived value and purchase decisions in second-hand luxury resale — rather than blockchain in supply chains, which was already well covered.
Two markets, different trust conditions.
The study was designed as a cross-national comparison between Vietnam and France. France offered a mature luxury context, while Vietnam provided a rapidly digitalising market with less standardised institutional safeguards in second-hand transactions.
This contrast made it possible to examine whether blockchain-enabled sustainability information activates different trust-formation and value-evaluation mechanisms across the two markets.
Turning a theoretical model into testable relationships.
The final study used a quantitative cross-national survey, collecting 465 valid responses from Vietnam and France. The questionnaire was pretested, localised into both Vietnamese and French, and distributed using purposive sampling among respondents familiar with luxury fashion and blockchain-related concepts.
The analysis applied PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4 to test how blockchain-enabled immutability, transparency, and clarity influence customer trust, perceived sustainability value, blockchain-enabled electronic word-of-mouth, relationship commitment, and purchase intention across the two markets.
From a working model to a published paper.
The project developed into a peer-reviewed journal article published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services in 2026. The published article states that it “represents the first cross-national attempt to explain how such information shapes consumer choices in the second-hand high-end fashion sector” — that wording is the paper’s, and it survived peer review.
The published study contributes both theoretically and practically by extending Affordance Theory and Trust-Commitment Theory in a consumer-facing blockchain context.
Four findings that held up.
Blockchain information worked through trust and value.
Immutability and certification transparency significantly strengthened customer trust and perceived sustainability value, showing that blockchain-enabled sustainability information matters most when it improves credibility.
Clarity was the most consistent driver.
Clearer sustainability comparison information positively influenced blockchain-enabled eWOM, customer trust, and perceived sustainability value across the model, making clarity one of the most reliable mechanisms in the study.
The same tool worked differently across markets.
Vietnamese and French consumers did not respond in the same way. In Vietnam, blockchain-related mechanisms showed stronger behavioural and relational effects, while in France customer trust and relationship commitment played a more central role.
eWOM mattered more as a behavioural cue.
Blockchain-enabled eWOM did not significantly strengthen customer trust in either market, but it played a more meaningful role in downstream behavioural and relational outcomes, especially in Vietnam.
The numbers behind it.
Published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services in 2026.
Valid responses collected across Vietnam and France in a cross-national quantitative study.
Used SmartPLS 4 to test how blockchain-enabled sustainability information shapes trust, value, eWOM, relationship commitment, and purchase intention.
What was mine, and what was the team’s.
Five students, two supervisors.
- Helped narrow the gap — I argued for moving from sustainable fashion to second-hand luxury resale.
- CRediT: drafting, review & editing, visualisation, validation, investigation, data curation.
Conceptualisation and methodology are credited to the lead author. The gap-narrowing is my own account, not a CRediT category.
- Study design, survey instrument and PLS-SEM modelling.
- Data collection across two countries; seven revision rounds during publication.
Nguyen et al. (2026), Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 92:104808.
- Shows research holding up across seven revision rounds during the publication process.
- Doesn’t show speed, client delivery, or implementation.
- Changed my mind about myself: my VIA result put perseverance 23rd of 24. Seven rounds of revision suggest otherwise.
Title. Blockchain-enabled sustainability information in second-hand luxury fashion — Vietnam and France.
Author. Nguyen et al. — An Quach, co-author.
Date. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2026.
Why. It is the piece of work that has been checked hardest by people outside my team.
Career relevance. Demonstrates rigorous quantitative and cross-cultural research relevant to consumer insights.