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1. Introduction
Recently, the emergence of new digital technologies has been transforming the business landscape around the globe and disrupting traditional business models, processes and operations in many ways (Ivanov et al., 2019, 2020). Among the most cutting-edge technologies introduced in the era of the fourth industrial revolution, blockchain technology (BT) has the potential to significantly reshape business ecosystems in various industries (Chang et al., 2019; Pournader et al., 2020). BT is a distributed ledger technology that records peer-to-peer transactions that are time-stamped and “chained” together in chronological order without a central control authority (Tapscott and Tapscott, 2017; Ganne, 2018). The key features of this technology are traceability, security, transparency and automation (Iansiti and Lakhani, 2017). Many industries are highly interested in applying BT to solve market inefficiencies and reduce transaction costs and delays (Yang, 2019). Gartner (2019) estimated that BT will generate over US$175bn in new business by 2025, which will surge to more than US$3tn by 2030. PwC (2018) forecasted that by 2030, 10–20% of global economic infrastructure will be running on blockchain-based applications and systems.
The logistics and supply chain industry has been identified as one of the most feasible industries for BT application (Erol et al., 2020). BT is expected to have important implications for supply chain management (SCM), especially in the post-COVID-19 economic recovery period (World Economic Forum, 2020). Due to mandated lockdowns, the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the importance of digitalizing supply chain operations and fostering a paperless supply chain, which could be enabled by using BT (Ivanov et al., 2020). In addition, by ensuring data integrity and transparency, BT can contribute to rebuilding disrupted supply networks and rendering these more resilient (Dubey et al., 2020) and efficient (Kshetri, 2018).
While BT is expected to generate a tremendous impact on SCM, the development and application of this technology are still in its infancy (Wamba and Queiroz, 2020; Kouhizadeh et al., 2021). It is thus worth exploring what factors firms consider when deciding whether to adopt BT. Several recent studies have empirically examined the determinants of BT adoption (e.g. Kamble et al., 2019; Queiroz and Wamba, 2019; Kamble et al., 2021). The factors they studied come from classic technology adoption models such...