“Does blockchain technology matter?”: Understanding consumer purchase intention in a blockchain technology for olive oil context

Abstract

Background: Blockchain, which was once primarily connected with financial services, is now affecting other businesses as well. Blockchain is gaining power as a tool to trace and monitor food as it moves through the supply chain, confirming its provenance. Consumers are becoming increasingly interested in learning where their purchases are created and how they are made. Consumers in the food business can use blockchain to verify the source of their purchases. Despite some blockchain studies on innovation uptake in finance settings, little is known about how consumers view blockchain in terms of food traceability and transparency, particularly olive oil products. Purpose: To look why people would want to buy olive oil with blockchain code, using an adapted version of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTAUT2) that includes the perceived trust among other variables. Materials and Methods: A survey methodology is used to collect responses from a sample of 115 olive oil consumers in France and analyzed via AMOS 23. Linear regression was used to assess the causal relationship between measured variables. Results: The results indicate that the trust value generated by the blockchain technology has a strong effect on olive oil product’s purchase intention. The unexpected result is that the other values, such as performance expectancy or effort expectancy, have no impact on that behavioural intention among French population. Conclusions: For researchers, this study lunches a new call to discussion on the predictive effectiveness of the UTAUT2 model. In addition, it provides new insights to practitioners on how to increase the purchase intention towards olive oil brands that uses blockchain technology.