Religious Signaling and Consumer Trust in Bangladesh's Facebook Commerce: A Generational Perspective

This study examines how religious signaling influences consumer trust and purchase behavior within Bangladesh’s Facebook-based commerce (f-commerce) ecosystem. Drawing on signaling theory, the Elaboration Liked Model (ELM), and social commerce trust frameworks, the research combines a structured survey of 400 respondents across four generational cohorts with five scenario-based choice experiments. Customer reviews emerged as the dominant trust driver (69% of respondents), while religious endorsement ranked last at 5%. Chi-square tests confirmed significant generational differences (χ² = 47.3, df = 6, p < .001): consumers aged 35 and above were substantially more responsive to religious cues, whereas Gen Z and younger millennials relied predominantly on reviews and verifiable information. Binary logistic regression identified customer reviews (OR = 4.21, p < .001) and seller professionalism (OR = 2.87, p < .001) as the strongest independent predictors of purchase intention, while religious cue exposure was non-significant after controls (OR = 1.21, p = .251). These findings extend and contextualise Islam et al.’s (2023) demonstration that religious belief predicts halal purchase intention in formal branded product contexts, showing that this effect is suppressed in informal digital commerce when consumer reviews are present. The study reconceptualises religious signaling as a secondary, context-dependent trust mechanism within a multi-layered hierarchy, with implications for digital marketing practice, consumer protection policy, and the study of religion in informal digital markets.