A cross-country study of how blockchain-verified sustainability information reshapes electronic word-of-mouth and purchase commitment in the resale market — Vietnam and France.
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.
The paper was published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services.
Began with sustainable fashion and the wider 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 key gap was not blockchain in supply chains alone, but how blockchain-enabled sustainability information shapes consumer trust, perceived value, and purchase-related outcomes in second-hand luxury resale.
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.
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.
The project developed into a peer-reviewed journal article published in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services in 2026. The final paper positioned itself as the first cross-national attempt to explain how blockchain-enabled sustainability information shapes consumer choices in the second-hand high-end fashion sector.
The published study contributes both theoretically and practically by extending Affordance Theory and Trust-Commitment Theory in a consumer-facing blockchain context.
Immutability and certification transparency significantly strengthened customer trust and perceived sustainability value, showing that blockchain-enabled sustainability information matters most when it improves credibility.
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.
Vietnamese and French consumers did not respond in the same way. In Vietnam, blockchain-related mechanisms showed stronger behavioral and relational effects, while in France customer trust and relationship commitment played a more central role.
Blockchain-enabled eWOM did not significantly strengthen customer trust in either market, but it played a more meaningful role in downstream behavioral and relational outcomes, especially in Vietnam.
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.