Blockchain Technology Adoption in Food Industry - A Consumer Perspective Approach

Abstract

A prior current conern in the food industry is how to ensure the food safety. These food safety issues have posed major risks to the health of consumers which keep triggerring public’s safety requirements on the food quality. Therefore, ensuring food safety is of great significance to the health of consumers and also the development of food industry. Currently, the information asymmetry among each participant of food supplychain partly causes the food fraud, which increases the difficulty in traceing related information such as the food raw materials during the whole completion of food production. Currently, some technologies have been introduced to solve the food safety issues, among which Blockchain technology (BCT) is expected to provide better visibility and transparency by removing the disadvantages of trust related issues with its technical characteristics. Blockchain technology exploits a shared participation mechanisms that all stakeholders involved in the food supply chain, which means consumers, food producers, and suppliers are also gradually transforming into a new relationship. In recent years, the market of BCT in the food industry is expected to grow, owing to an increase in the demand for supply chain transparency. The major driver of the blockchain market is the growing number of food fraud cases. The growth rate of small and medium-sized enterprises is higher as several startups are investing in this market across the globe and understanding the benefits this technology offers, yet still not widely adopted in the globe. Many scholars tried to study the acceptance and adoption of BCT technology by using TAM, UTAUT, TPB model, from the perspective of supply chian in the food industry instead of consumers. However, it is of same significance to study the acceptance of this technology among consumers, for better promoting the adoption of blockchain technology and its applications. As BCT technology is different from other technologies, users are not only the one who accept the technology, but also consumers for personal purposes. Hence, the user perceived value of BCT in the food industry should be taken into consideration. Therefore, based on the above mentioned, this paper not only analyze the factors of the BCT itself, but also the perceived value of consumers towards the intention to use of the BCT in the food industry by using the Value-based Adoption Model(VAM). So this paper is to explore the effect of beneficial and sacrificial factors of BCT applied in the food industry on the perceived value as well as the effect of moderating variables on beneficial and sacrificial factors of BCT applied in the food industry on perceived value. The results indicate that the division of beneficial and sacrificial factors of BCT applied in the food industry is very necessary, which can clearly show the impact of various characteristics on perceived value and intention to use. Besides, in the model of VAM, the higher the user perceived value, the higher the user intention of intention to use, so we proposed that IT solotion providers of BCT should pay more attention to user perceived value in their development and operation. Key Words: Block chian technology; Food safety; Supply chain; Intention to use; Perceived value