Diffusion of blockchain technology

Diffusion of blockchain technology: Insights from academic literature and social media analytics

Grover, Purva (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Kar, Arpan Kumar (Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
Janssen, M.F.W.H.A. (TU Delft Information and Communication Technology)

2019

Purpose: Although blockchain is often discussed, its actual diffusion seems to be varying for different industries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the blockchain technology diffusion in different industries through a combination of academic literature and social media (Twitter). Design/methodology/approach: The insights derived from the academic literature and social media have been used to classify industries into five stages of the innovation-decision process, namely, knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation (Rogers, 1995). Findings: Blockchain is found to be diffused in almost all industries, but the level of diffusion varies. The analysis highlights that manufacturing industry is at the knowledge stage. Further public administration is at persuasion stage. Subsequently, transportation, communications, electric, gas and sanitary services and trading industry had reached to the decision stage. Then, services industries have reached to implementation stage while finance, insurance and real estate industries are the innovators of blockchain technologies and have reached the confirmation stage of innovation-decision process. Practical implications: Actual implementations of blockchain technology are still in its infancy stage for most of the industries. The findings suggest that specific industries are developing specific blockchain applications. Originality/value: To the best of the authors’ knowledge this is the first study which is using social media data for investigating the diffusion of blockchain in industries. The results show that the combination of Twitter and academic literature analysis gives better insights into diffusion than a single data source.

Blockchain
Diffusion of innovation
Social media analytics
Systematic literature review
Technology adoption

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:0ce3dd32-03a0-44c4-9054-7339162ce864

https://doi.org/10.1108/JEIM-06-2018-0132

2020-02-04

1741-0398

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, 32 (5), 735-757

Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2019 Purva Grover, Arpan Kumar Kar, M.F.W.H.A. Janssen