Barriers in the Adoption of Smart Contract in Trade Finance

Abstract

This study investigates the barriers to the adoption of smart contract in trade finance from the perspective of Pakistani business educated people, banking officials, and investors who understands import and export business in Pakistan. The objective of this study is to examine the factors that influence individuals' Behavioural Intention (BI) to embrace smart contracts in the context of trade finance. Using Smart PLS bootstrapping, this study examines the associations between a set of independent factors, which include Performance Expectancy (PE), Effort Expectancy (EE), Perceived Ease of Use (PEU), Perceived Utility (PU), Facilitating Conditions (FC), Environmental Concerns (EC), Trust (T) and Social Influence/Competition (SI), Subjective Norm (SN) and the dependent variable, BI. The results indicate that there are noteworthy positive connections between EE, PE, PEU, Perceived Usefulness (PU), and Social Influence (SI) with Behavioural Intension (BI). These findings are consistent with established theories on technology adoption. Nevertheless, the hypotheses pertaining to EC, FC, SNs (SN), and Trust (T) lack empirical evidence. Technological-Organizational-Environmental (TOE) Framework and Technological Acceptance Model are used to derive the factors expected to affect the adoption of smart contract in trade finance. As the emerging smart contract techno­­logy could potentially reshape the trade financing landscape, understanding the factors affecting the adoption of the technology for trade finance is of great importance.