Exploring the critical factors affecting the adoption of blockchain: Taiwan’s banking industry

Abstract

As an emerging technology, blockchain has recently gained attention in both academic and economic fields, but its adoption is not yet widespread in the banking sector in Taiwan. As academics have paid scant attention to this topic, this study determines the critical factors affecting blockchain adoption from the organizational perspective in the banking industry. We propose hybrid methods to fill the gap in the literature. First, we apply the technology-organization-environment framework as the basis and combine relevant factors as a framework to identify the relevant evaluation factors. Second, we propose a hybrid method that integrates the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with the evaluation based on distance from average solution (EDAS) approach and employs DEMATEL to measure the importance of the factors and alternatives to blockchain as ranked by the EDAS method. According to the ranking results, we identify the best preference among alternatives to blockchain. The results suggest that organizational and technological aspects are the main considerations to enhance and promote the effectiveness of blockchain adoption. This study suggests valuable strategies for stimulating blockchain adoption in the banking sector in Taiwan.