Responsible Green Datafication in Household Low‐Carbon Technologies: Trust, Legitimacy, and Consumer Adoption

ABSTRACT

Household digital low‐carbon technologies can support sustainable consumption while expanding the collection and algorithmic use of domestic data, creating a tension between environmental benefits and the legitimacy of data‐intensive consumer systems. Drawing on privacy‐calculus, digital‐trust, institutional‐legitimacy, responsible‐innovation, and sustainable‐consumption perspectives, this study examines how governance cues and datafication risks relate to consumer adoption through responsible data trust and perceived green‐data legitimacy. A survey‐based 2 × 2 vignette experiment with 620 Vietnamese adults manipulated a bundled governance‐disclosure package (clear versus vague) and assurance source (external versus private), while covariance‐based structural equation modeling tested associations among measured perceptions. Meaningful data transparency, perceived user control, algorithmic explainability, and provider credibility were positively associated with responsible data trust, whereas privacy concern and surveillance risk were negatively associated with it. Responsible data trust was positively associated with green‐data legitimacy, which in turn was associated with adoption intention and pilot acceptance. Digital literacy strengthened two of the three proposed governance‐cue relationships; institutional trust strengthened the provider‐credibility relationship, and environmental concern strengthened the legitimacy–adoption relationships. Randomized factorial tests showed positive main effects of richer governance disclosure and external assurance on all four focal outcomes, with no significant interaction. The study contributes by distinguishing relational trust in data handling from the broader legitimacy of using household data for low‐carbon purposes and by specifying conditions under which this trust–legitimacy explanation appears more or less applicable. Practically, the findings support intelligible and controllable data governance and credible external assurance while cautioning against attributing the bundled disclosure effect to any single governance component or describing the two experimental cues as synergistic.