Factors Affecting Employees’ Acceptance of Blockchain in the Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Blockchain technology is a distributed digital ledger that boosts decentralised applications. This technology has many potential applications in the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) industry. Yet, blockchain technology adoption is still low in HEIs. Within the adoption process, neglecting employees’ acceptance of blockchain technology might cause a failure in adopting blockchain. To address the blockchain acceptance problem, this study aims to determine the factors that impact employees’ acceptance of blockchain technology within HEIs. To accomplish this aim, this paper proposes a framework that extends the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) with blockchain characteristics to determine the factors that affect blockchain acceptance among HEIs’ employees. Specifically, the proposed model includes UTAUT constructs: effort expectance, performed expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, behavioural intention and technology use, and blockchain characteristics, including security and trust. Also, this study investigates HEIs employees’ awareness as a moderator of UTAUT factors. This paper contributes to academia as it proposes a new theoretical framework that contains factors that might facilitate or hinder the implementation of blockchain technology applications among employees. The present paper also contributes to practitioners in HEIs as it informs decision-makers about potential factors concerning employees’ acceptance of the blockchain technology.