A Combinative Perspective on Technology Adoption: A Case Analysis of Blockchain Technology Adoption in the Chinese Financial Industry

Abstract

This chapter updates the technology adoption literatures by investigating the technology evolution and analyzing the network actor’s interactions in a case study of blockchain technology (BT) adoption in Chinese financial industry. Based on the primary data collected via interview and focus group discussion, as well as the secondary data from the websites and media reports. Three main findings and contributions are obtained. First of all, we propose a combinative perspective of technology evolution and social network to analyze the technology adoption. This adds new insights to the research on technology adoption. Secondly, we identify a close relationship between technology evolution and network actor’s interactions, which can explain how BT is adopted in Chinese financial industry, and three stages are distinguished under the background of worldwide BT development. Thirdly, this chapter analyzes BT adoption case systematically from different actors’ perspectives, such as investors, exchanges, BT companies, traditional financial institutions, government and block chain financial research institutes, which provides a comprehensive investigation of this phenomenon and suggests some future research directions Lastly, some adoption problems have been observed from this case and the corresponding solutions are proposed, which are expected to offer some managerial insights.