Blockchain for sustainability : a multilevel perspective connecting consumers and organisations

Abstract

Consumers' interest in sustainable consumption is growing, yet adoption remains low due to the uncertainties surrounding sustainable products, which has become a prevailing concern given the untrustworthy businesses’ sustainable practices. While growing academic scholarships have proposed digital solutions to streamline business sustainable practices, such as sustainable supply chains, a significant knowledge gap exists in furnishing the potential impact of blockchain on consumers' sustainable behavior and aligning organizational efforts for a sustainable future. Consequently, it confines the conceptual understanding and practical implications for designing digital solutions that could support sustainable decision-making. This dissertation investigates the impact of blockchain on sustainability from both consumers’ and organisations’ perspectives. Specifically, it aims to examine how and in what way blockchain can affect consumers’ sustainable decision-making and may reduce the uncertainties related to sustainability outcomes across organisational practices.

This research, from a consumer’s perspective, uses the theoretically grounded research models (i.e. based on the consumption value, affordance and signalling theories) to rationalise the impact of blockchain on consumers’ sustainable consumption behaviour. From an organisational standpoint, it builds on the theoretical concepts of IT artefact characteristics and digital supply chain integration to explore the potential role of blockchain to mitigating uncertainties surrounding sustainable sellers and products. This dissertation has adopted a mixed-method approach, combining focus groups, scenario-based surveys, and experiments. Altogether, the research findings offer novel insights into the varying effects of blockchain revealing the positive impact of blockchain affordances (i.e. transparency, traceability, and immutability) on the consumption values that drive sustainable purchase intention. However, when consumers have information-seeking tendencies, blockchain transparency has a negative impact on consumers’ satisfaction with sustainable products. At the organisational level, digital supply chain integration (operational, information, and relational) positively affects supply chain collaboration and enhances sustainable product authenticity. Nevertheless, if organisations use blockchain-based platforms, the interaction effect of transparency levels on the association between operational integration and supply chain collaboration declines. Similarly, while IT artefact characteristics of digital supply chain platform (i.e. traceability and immutability) positively affect supply chain operational integration, ultimately reducing seller uncertainty, the specific impact of traceability is more strengthened in the case of blockchain-based platforms, compared to non-blockchain-based platforms. Overall, this dissertation highlights the efficacy of blockchain and provides a deeper understanding of its perceived benefits for consumers’ sustainable consumption and enabling assurance in organisations’ sustainability practices.

The research findings collectively contribute to information systems (IS), consumer behaviour, and digital supply chain research by enhancing understanding of the sociotechnical impacts of blockchain from both consumers’ and organisations’ perspectives. This understanding can be useful for linking organisations’ sustainable practices with consumers’ sustainability needs to improve sustainability-related outcomes.