Critical determinants for blockchain technology adoption in Chinese supply chain companies

Blockchain technology (BCT) is a “shared, cryptographically unaltered distributed ledger” to record and maintain the digital transaction history. Each connected node on the blockchain system stores a copy of all previous records/transactions ever executed on the concerned system (Yadav et al., 2020). Although the values and benefits of adopting BCT are significant for firms, the challenges of adopting BCT for transaction validation should not be overlooked. These underlying challenges could inhibit the willingness of firms to adopt BCT. The potential gains of adopting BCT in organizations are often impeded by their unwillingness to accept and use (Davis, 1989; Mathieson, 1991). In addition, recent research revealed that the adoption of BCT is indecisive in many firms (Kouhizadeh et al., 2021). The hesitation of adopting BCT may regard as a lack of relevant understanding and experience, future research should investigate the key facilitators of adopting BCT (Janssen et al., 2020). This study adopts an organization-level theory, called technology-organization-environment (TOE) framework, to predict BCT adoption in supply chains (Jia, Guo, & Barnes, 2017).