Blockchain technology adoption barriers in the Indian agricultural supply chain: an integrated approach

Abstract

Recent outbreaks of food contamination scandals in India have resulted in increased concerns amongst consumers about food safety. Further, to tackle such circumstances, conformation to quality has become a must in Agriculture Supply Chain (ASC). Agro-stakeholders have tried to accomplish this demand through the integration of technology in ASC. One such technology is blockchain, which is still in its infancy in terms of adoption in India. Fueled by this motivation, we aim to investigate the significant barriers for blockchain adoption in Indian ASC. The constructs are identified through a comprehensive literature search and opinion of domain experts from five agro-organizations, academia, and agro-stakeholders. Further identified construct is modeled using an integrated ISM-DEMATEL approach, which not only interrogates interrelationship amongst identified constructs but also evaluates the intensity of the relationship between them. The identified constructs are also clustered into a suitable group using Fuzzy-MICMAC. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is also performed to check the robustness of the proposed model. The results reveal that “lack of government regulation and lack of trust among agro-stakeholder to use blockchain” are significant adoption barriers of blockchain in Indian ASC. Moreover, the managerial implication about the results is also provided, which will be useful to government and related agencies to take suitable measures to overcome these obstacles for increasing the rate of blockchain adoption in Indian ASC.