Evaluating barriers to blockchain technology for sustainable agricultural supply chain: A fuzzy hierarchical group DEMATEL approach

The recent increase in food contamination, corruption, and child labor in the agricultural industry has prompted attention to sustainable supply chain management (SSCM). Although some companies try to solve these problems through blockchain technology, there are many barriers to adopting blockchain technology for the SSCM, especially in the agriculture supply chain of emerging economies. Through literature review, this paper first constructs a two-level barrier framework, 4 main barriers, and 22 sub-barriers to adopt blockchain technology for the SSCM. Then, we propose a novel hierarchical group Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) based on probability hesitant fuzzy sets (P-HFS) to prioritize those barriers and identify the influence relationship among them. Through an empirical case in the cocoa supply chain of Ghana, the results of the proposed method showed that the Intra-organizational barrier is the most significant main barrier, while the system barrier is the most influential barrier with the highest net effect value. The most significant sub-barriers are lack of management commitment and support in intra-organizational sub-barriers, lack of customer awareness and tendency in inter-organizational sub-barriers, security challenges in system-related sub-barriers, and lack of industry involvement in ethical and safe practices in external sub-barriers, respectively. Interestingly, those most significant sub-barriers are also the most influential factors in other sub-barriers. These findings help managers and policymakers to prioritize their efforts and resources in addressing the barriers in some emerging economies in Africa.