Blockchain Adoption for Agri-Products Supply Chain Traceability and Sustainability
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2025
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Traceability is crucial in the Agri-product supply chain for reasons such as quality assurance, consumer trust, regulatory compliance, risk management, and sustainability goals. It guarantees food safety, quality, and compliance by tracking Agri-products throughout the supply chain, providing transparency and enabling responses to contamination or recalls. Traceability helps build consumer trust, meet regulatory standards, and promote sustainability within the supply chain. Blockchain is a cutting-edge technology that ensures traceability, contributing to supply chain sustainability. Although its use for traceability is an emerging research area in food supply chain management, there is still a lack of empirical studies on how blockchain adoption influences traceability and sustainability. Therefore, this study investigates blockchain adoption for supply chain traceability and sustainability.
An initial model was proposed based on an extensive literature review through the lens of the Dynamic Capability View (DCV), Transaction Cost Theory (TCT), and Institutional Theory (IT). Constructs were identified, and their validity and reliability were tested. The hypotheses were examined, and the findings interpreted. This study deployed a quantitative method within the positivist paradigm. Survey data were collected from global Agri-products industries, yielding 294 usable responses from producers, processors, transporters, wholesalers, and retailers. Partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used, following a two-phase evaluation of the measurement and structural models.
The study used DCV, TCT, and IT to explain how organisations meet internal and external environmental contexts. It identifies drivers (stakeholder requirements, competitive pressure, market dynamics, regulatory support) and barriers (technological limitations, lack of infrastructure, lack of top management support) to blockchain adoption. Blockchain adoption is argued as a dynamic capability enabling supply chain traceability, which functions as an operational capability for tracking origin, characteristics, quality, and other product parameters. Traceability supports transaction cost transparency, reduces opportunism, and helps stakeholders make rational decisions while addressing bounded rationality.
The findings confirm significant impacts and positive relationships between environmental drivers and blockchain adoption, along with direct, indirect, and conditional effects on traceability and sustainability. The study uniquely confirms the mediating role of traceability between blockchain adoption and sustainability, empirically tested for the first time. It also validates a blockchain adoption model for Agri-products supply chain traceability and sustainability using PLS-SEM.
The research extends theoretical understanding by integrating DCV, TCT, and Institutional Theory, emphasising coercive, normative, and mimetic pressures influencing blockchain adoption. The proposed model offers a practical framework to guide managers in enhancing traceability and sustainability across Agri-products supply chains.
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