Effects of green certification and price premiums on consumer willingness to pay for recycled products from construction and demolition waste

Purpose Understanding consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for construction and demolition waste (CDW)-recycled products is crucial for advancing the circular economy. While prior studies have separately examined consumers' responses to green products and price premiums, a neurocognitive gap remains in integrating the dual factors (green certification as a sustainability cue and price premium as a cost cue), especially for CDW-recycled products. This study aims to investigate how green certification tiers and price premiums influence consumers' WTP and the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms. Design/methodology/approach An event-related potential (ERP) experiment with a 3 (green certification tier: one-star, two-star, and three-star) × 3 (price premium level: 5%, 20%, and 35%) within-subjects factorial design was conducted. Forty participants completed a behavioral choice task (WTP assessment) while EEG data were recorded. Findings Key results revealed that behaviorally, WTP increased with increasing certification tiers and decreased with increasing premium levels, showing a significant synergistic interaction. The combination of two-star and 20% premium products elicited the longest response time, consistent with diagnostic ambiguity, while three-star and 5% premium products showed the shortest response time, consistent with cue consistency. Neurophysiologically, P200 amplitude increased for one-star products at 20% premium, suggesting greater attentional resource allocation for this cue combination. N400 amplitude peaked for one-star products at 35% premium, suggesting greater evaluative conflict associated with the “low-quality high-price” combination, while three-star products showed no significant N400 difference at 35% premiums. Originality/value These results revealed the impacts of green certification and price premiums on WTP from a behavioral-neural perspective for CDW-recycled products, demonstrating that cue consistency and diagnosticity jointly modulate decision-making at both behavioral and neural levels. The findings offer reference for enterprises' pricing and communication strategies and for policymakers' efforts to refine green certification frameworks, with the aim of advancing circular economy objectives in construction.