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Blockchain technology (BCT) has emerged as a powerful tool for enhancing transparency and trust. However, the relationship between the benefits of BCT and agri-food supply chain performance (AFSCperf) remains underexplored. Therefore, the current study investigates the influence of BCT on AFSCperf and sustainability issues.

Through a comprehensive literature review, various benefits of BCT are identified. Subsequently, a research framework is proposed based on data collected from questionnaire surveys and personal visits to professionals in the agri-food industry. The proposed framework is validated using partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The findings reveal that BCT positively impacts AFSCperf by improving traceability, transparency, food safety and quality, immutability and trust. Additionally, BCT adoption enhances stakeholder collaboration, provides a decentralised network, improves data accessibility and yields a better return on investment, resulting in the overall improvement in AFSCperf and socio-economic sustainability.

This study offers valuable practical insights for practitioners and academicians, establishing empirical links between the benefits of BCT and AFSCperf and providing a deeper understanding of BCT adoption.

Stakeholders, managers, policymakers and technology providers can leverage these findings to optimise the benefits of BCT in enhancing AFSCperf. Moreover, it utilises rigorous theoretical and empirical approaches, drawing on a multidisciplinary perspective encompassing food operations and supply chain literature, public policy, information technology, strategy, organisational theory and sustainability.

In recent times, reverse logistics (RL) is gaining significant traction in various automobile industries to recapture returned vehicles’ value. A good RL program can lower manufacturing costs, establish a green supply chain, enhance customer satisfaction and provide a competitive advantage. However, reducing disruptions and increasing operational efficiency in the automobile RL requires implementing innovative technology to improve information flow and security. Thus, this manuscript aims to examine the hurdles in automobile RL activities and how they can be effectively tackled by blockchain technology (BCT). Merging BCT and RL provides the entire automobile industry a chance to generate value for its consumers through effective vehicle return policies, manufacturing cost reduction, maintenance records tracking, administration of vehicle information and a clear payment record of insurance contracts.

This research is presented in three stages to accomplish the task. First, previous literature and experts' opinions are examined to highlight certain factors that are an aggravation to BCT implementation. Next, this study proposed an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) – decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) with Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships. Finally, the causal outline diagrams are plotted to determine the influence of factors on one another for BCT implementation in automobile RL.

This study has categorized the barriers to BCT implementation into five major factors – operational and strategical, technical, knowledge and behavioral, financial and infrastructural, and government rules and regulations. The results revealed that disreputable technology, low-bearing capacity of IT systems and operational inefficiency are the most significant factors to be dealt with by automobile industry professionals for finer and enhanced RL processes utilizing BCT. The most noticeable advantage of BCT is its enormous amount of data, permitting automobile RL to develop client experience through real-time data insights.

This study reveals several factors that are hindering the implementation of BCT in RL activities of the automobile industry. The results can assist experts and policymakers improve their existing decision-making systems while making an effort to implement BCT into the automobile industry's RL activities.

Although there are several studies on the benefits of BCT in RL and the adoption of BCT in the automobile industry, individually, none have explicated the use of BCT in automobile RL. This is also the first kind of study that has used IVIFS-DEMATEL with the Choquet integral framework for computing and analyzing the comparative results of factor interrelationships hindering BCT implementation in automobile RL activities.

This paper aims to assess the readiness of retail workers to use blockchain technology (BCT) to improve supply chain performance. The assessment was made via a quantitative approach taken using a theoretical framework based on Keller’s motivation model and self-determination theory in the BCT context.

The authors collected data from 567 retail workers from an emerging country through a structured survey questionnaire. The authors tested the hypotheses of the proposed model using Warp PLS 7.0 and controlled firm age, industry type and technological intensity.

Our findings may help firms in making the process of digital transformation inclusive. The authors found that supplier-based attention and motivation through BCT lead to supply chain performance, and that supplier-based satisfaction and trust achieved through BCT positively impact supply chain performance. Further, supplier-based relevance on raw material selection with the higher trust and motivation levels achieved through BCT was found to have a positive impact on supply chain performance.

IT supply chain applications are referred to as “lean” rather than “rich” because they still rely mainly on written and numerical means to present data. When the environment is less ambiguous, then less rich media can be used to facilitate communication. IT supply chain applications allow suppliers to spend time building relationships with other suppliers instead of focusing on administrative tasks, thus enhancing such relationships.

This study can be considered the first to assess retailer readiness to use BCT to improve supply chain performance through the theoretical lens of Keller’s motivation model and self-determination theory.

This study aims to determine the barriers hindering the incorporation of blockchain technology (BCT) in two key service industries – hotel and health care – as well as to assess their readiness for implementing BCT after overcoming the barriers.

The barriers of this study are determined through two phases: a review of prior literature and obtaining expert opinions, which are then analyzed to identify specific barriers that are impeding the incorporation of BCT. Moreover, to generate a blockchain implementation reluctance index (BIRI), this study presents an interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy set (IVIFS) that uses graph theory and matrix approach (GTMA). The permanent function in the GTMA approach is computed using the PERMAN algorithm. Finally, to compare the readiness of the hotel and health-care industries to adopt BCT, the BIRI values are plotted and evaluated.

The barriers identified by this study are listed under five major headings, namely, financial, operational, behavioral, technical and legal. This study revealed that the operational and technical barriers of BCT are critically hindering its widespread integration in hotel and health-care industries. Furthermore, on comparing the BIRI values of both industries, the result suggested that the hotel industry needs to work more on these barriers to effectively incorporate BCT. Besides the comparison, the BIRI values clearly indicate that both industries have to put a lot of effort into the mitigation of the barriers found by this study to successfully integrate BCT.

The experts’ opinions are used to evaluate the identified barriers, which raises the chance that the opinions are prejudiced based on the experts’ perspectives and ideologies. The sensitivity of decision-maker loads toward preference outcomes is not analyzed in this manuscript. Therefore, any recent sensitivity analysis may be considered a prospective field for future research. This study applies a multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) approach, IVIFS–GTMA, which limits the evaluation of the influence caused by individual barriers on the integration of BCT in the hotel and health-care industries. Henceforth, in future investigations, alternative MCDM methods may be used to analyze individual barriers.

According to the findings, if the hotel or health-care industry aims to incorporate BCT in its supply chain operations, it is recommended to emphasize more on the operational barriers along with the technical and behavioral barriers. The barriers mentioned in this manuscript can be used as guidance for developers in their development activities, such as scalability concerns, establishment costs, the 51% attack and the inefficient nature of BCT. Furthermore, they may address the potential users’ negative perceptions about security, privacy, trust and risk avoidance through creatively developed blockchain solutions to promote BCT implementation.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study that identifies barriers toward BCT incorporation in the major service industries, i.e. hotel and health care. Moreover, this is the first study that compares the preparedness of the hotel and health-care industries to determine the industry that requires more work to implement BCT.

Collaborative emission reduction among supply chain members has emerged as a new trend to achieve climate neutrality goals and meet consumers’ low-carbon preferences. However, carbon information asymmetry and consumer mistrust represent significant obstacles. This paper investigates the value of blockchain technology (BCT) in solving the above issues.

A low-carbon supply chain consisting of one supplier and one manufacturer is examined. This study discusses three scenarios: non-adoption BCT, adoption BCT without sharing the supplier’s carbon emission reduction (CER) information and adoption BCT with sharing the supplier’s CER information. We analyze the optimal decisions of the supplier and the manufacturer through the Stackelberg game, identify the conditions in which the supplier and manufacturer adopt BCT and share information from the perspectives of economic and environmental performance.

The results show that adopting BCT benefits supply chain members, even if they do not share CER information through BCT. Furthermore, when the supplier’s CER efficiency is low, the manufacturer prefers that the supplier share this information. Counterintuitively, the supplier will only share CER information through BCT when the CER efficiencies of both the supplier and manufacturer are comparable. This diverges from the findings of existing studies, as the CER investments of the supplier and the manufacturer in this study are interdependent. In addition, despite the high energy consumption associated with BCT, the supplier and manufacturer embrace its adoption and share CER information for the sake of environmental benefits.

The firms in low-carbon supply chains can adopt BCT to improve consumers’ trust. Furthermore, if the CER efficiencies of the firms are low, they should share CER information through BCT. Nonetheless, a lower unit usage cost of BCT is the precondition.

This paper makes the first move to discuss BCT adoption and BCT-supported information sharing for collaborative emission reduction in supply chains while considering the transparency and high consumption of BCT.

This study aims to identify the essential elements impacting the adoption of blockchain technology (BCT) in supply chain management (SCM) by integrating the technology acceptance and information system success (ISS) models.

Questionnaire-based data was collected from 236 supply chain professionals from Beijing. The proposed research framework was evaluated using structural equation modeling (SEM) by using SPSS 23 and AMOS 24 software.

The empirical findings specify the positive influence of total quality on perceived usefulness and compatibility. Further, perceived ease of use positively influences perceived usefulness, compatibility and behavioral intention. Moreover, perceived usefulness positively impacts compatibility and behavioral intention. Compatibility positively influences behavioral intention. Finally, technology trust was found to be a significant moderator between perceived usefulness and behavioral intention and between perceived ease of use and adoption intention to use BCT in SCM.

This study empirically develops the second-order construct of total quality, representing the ISS model. Furthermore, this study established how the ISS and technology acceptance models influence behavioral intention through compatibility. Finally, this study confirmed the moderating role of technology trust among perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and behavioral intention.

The purpose of this research paper is to review and synthesize the role of blockchain technology (BCT) in various types of illegal activities, including but not limited to fraud, money laundering, ransomware attacks, firearms, drug tracking, cyberattacks, identity theft and scams.

The authors conducted a review of studies related to illegal activities using blockchain from 2015 to 2023. Next, a thematic review of the literature was performed to see how these illegal activities were conducted using BCT.

Through this study, the authors identify the relevant themes that highlight the major illegal activities performed using BCT, its possible steps for prevention and the opportunities for future developments. Finally, the authors provide suggestions for future research using the theory, context and method framework.

No other research has synthesized the illegal activities using BCT through a thematic approach to the best of the authors’ knowledge. Hence, this study will act as a starting point for future research for academic and technical practitioners in this area.

The purpose of this study synthesises the body of research revolving around blockchain technology (BCT) whilst drawing on the technology-organization-environment framework, resource-based theory and theory of constraints, to conceptualize capabilities (enablers) and constraints (barriers) of BCT in the hospitality and tourism (H&T) industry.

A systematic literature review of BCT in the hotel and tourism industry has been achieved through two databases, i.e. Scopus and Web of Science. From 544 articles selected between the years 2008 and 2023 (first quarter), a sample of 49 articles was used to structure existing research on this subject.

The findings of this systematic literature review of BCT in the H&T literature establish a solid groundwork for assessing the evolution of this research area over time. Findings are classified into two groups: capabilities (enablers) and constraints (barriers) of BCT based on publication year, different research methods, theoretical underpinnings and applicable contexts.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first attempts to synthesize studies related to BCT in H&T research by combining three theoretical approaches. It serves as a foundation to evaluate the development of BCT studies in this field.

Digital technologies (DTs) have emerged as a major driving force, transmuting the ways Supply Chains (SCs) are managed. The integration of DTs in supply chain management (SCM), Digital Supply Chain Management (DSCM), has fundamentally reshaped the SCM landscape, offering new opportunities and challenges for organizations. This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of modern DTs and the way they impact modern SCM. This chapter has twofold objectives. First, it illustrates the major changes that DTs have brought to the supply chain landscape, unraveling their multifaceted implications. Second, it offers readers a deeper and comprehensive understanding of the challenges and opportunities arising from the incorporation of DTs into supply chains. By going through the chapter, readers will be able to have a comprehensive grasp of how DTs are reshaping SCM and how organizations can survive and thrive in the digital age. This chapter commences by shedding light on how DTs have and continue to redefine SCM, improving supply chain resilience, visibility, and sustainability in an increasingly complex and interconnected world. It also highlights the role of DTs in enhancing SC visibility, agility, and customer-centricity. Furthermore, this chapter briefly highlights the challenges related to the adoption (pre and post) of DTs in SCM, elucidating on issues related to talent acquisition, data security, and regulatory compliance. It also highlights the ethical and societal implications of this digital transformation, emphasizing the significance of responsible and sustainable practices. This chapter, with the help of three cases, illustrates how the adoption of DTs in SC can impact the various SC performance indicators.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the dark side of blockchain technology (BCT) adoption in small and mid-size enterprises. The focus of the authors is to decode the intricate relationship among the selected variables missing in the existing literature.

A focused group approach is initiated by the authors to identify the barriers. Total interpretive structural modeling, Matrice d'impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment, that is, matrix multiplication applied to classification and decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory are used to analyze the complex relationships among identified barriers.

This study finds that implementation of BCT reduces maintenance cost by withdrawing manual effort, as BCT has better capability to quantify the internal status of the system (observability characteristic). The observability characteristic of BCT provides high compatibility to the system. This study also finds that the compatibility of BCT with the organization reduces implementation cost and facilitates project management. The findings of this study recommend analyzing maintenance cost and compatibility of BCT before implementing it. Small and mid-size enterprises can select complex BCT depending on the sophistication level of IT usage and IT project management capabilities.

This study comes with various limitations, where the model developed by the authors may not be conclusive, as it is based exclusively on expert opinion. The samples collected may not help in validating the model statistically. Though the model has its limitations, it can still be considered as a nascent initiative for further investigation using structural equation modeling.

The outcomes of the theoretical and managerial contributions of the study can be categorized into three levels. This study can be used both by the industrialists and researchers to understand the barriers and the recovery methods thereafter. Suggestions that serve as future directives are also discussed by the authors.