A Meta-Analysis of Blockchain Acceptance Research and New Theory Directions

Abstract

Blockchain, through its secure distributed ledger technology, has been heralded as an important enabler of consumer and business applications. In addition to cryptocurrency, there are many examples of existing and planned implementations of blockchain-enabled systems in organizations, such as in the supply chain. However, what is unclear from the literature, are the mechanisms driving the acceptance of blockchain systems and the extent to which salient models of technology acceptance are capable of explaining adoption behavior. This research employs large-scale meta-SEM analysis using 37,865 respondents from 142 data sets to examine critically a variety of competing models of blockchain technology acceptance. The results identify two new models that help to explain a significant amount of variance in behavioral intention to use blockchain systems, trust-risk model (TRM) and a TRM/UTAUT2 hybrid TRAUT. Thus, although we find support for the standard models of acceptance, the paper suggests that new models incorporating trust and risk are essential in the blockchain context. The models are robust to tests using a variety of moderators of relationships.