Understanding Consumer Purchase Intention in a Blockchain Technology for Food Traceability and Transparency context

From being associated with the financial services primarily, blockchain is now affecting other industries as well. Blockchain is attracting interest as a way to track and monitor food through the supply network, ensuring its origin. Consumers are increasingly demanding to know where their purchases come from and how they are made. In food industry, consumers can confirm the provenance of their purchases by blockchain. Despite some blockchain research on innovation adoption in fintech contexts, little is known about how consumers evaluate blockchain in food traceability and transparency. This study explores consumers' motivations to purchase food with blockchain code and takes the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology 2 (UTA UT2) as a reference and develops an extended model by considering perceived trust, since the capabilities of blockchain technology for food traceability and transparency. The results show that blockchain technology has the capability to build trust and affect purchase intention. Results also highlight purchase intention is significantly and positively influenced by performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and habit. The results further show that technographic can significantly enhance intention to the use of blockchain technology to trace food The research provides an insight to practitioners and researchers on how to increase intention towards blockchain.