How certification credibility and benefit framing shape heterogeneous consumer responses to sustainable products in e-commerce

Abstract

On e-commerce platforms, sustainable products succeed or fail on a compressed product page where certification logos, benefit descriptions, and platform trust cues compete for attention. Retailers treat these cues as interchangeable signals, yet they address two different questions: can the product be trusted, and is it right for me? Signalling theory answers the first through costly, verifiable certification; goal-framing theory answers the second through benefit claims activating competing motivations. Whether they operate as one mechanism or two remains unresolved in retailing research. Using a discrete choice experiment with 477 Chinese consumers analysed through aggregate conditional logit, latent class analysis, and trust-stratified models, we show they are separable strategic levers. The certification credibility hierarchy (dual and international premiums above the domestic schemes) holds broadly across all three motivational segments, whereas benefit-framing valuation differs sharply between them, and this segment-level dissociation is the evidence for their separability. Platform trust does not significantly moderate certification premiums. Latent class analysis reveals a dual-motivated majority (53.5 per cent) that stated self-classification systematically understates, making choice-derived rather than self-reported segmentation essential for targeting. Extending goal-framing theory, the study's central contribution shows certification quality as a novel external cue: superior certification shifts dual-motivated consumers' default health preference toward environmental framing, narrowing it to near-parity, with a ¥16.68 break-even threshold at which the two framings reach indifference. These findings show heterogeneous consumer response is structured by the interaction between signal architecture and motivational composition, with implications for certification investment, benefit communication, and segmentation in sustainable retailing.