Examining the Antecedents of Blockchain Usage Intention: An Integrated Research Framework

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The following comments are for possible improvements to the article.

1) Authors should review and include some more Blockchain applications from recent literature. In the introduction and the literature review authors should link the benefits/requirement of a considered study with current Blockchain applications.

2) Can the results be biased towards the geographical locations of the users considered during the survey, or they can be generalized worldwide? The real question is can societies and/or local governments have different opinions about blockchain technology. If the answer is yes, how should companies mitigate such effects while utilizing the resources of this study?

3) Will the results be applicable to all types of Blockchain techniques?

4) Article seems to be written well. However, do check it for possible grammatical/structural mistakes. For example,

 

"The value of security, transparency, and privacy can also be offered to users via the technical features of blockchain.." remove additional punctuation marks.

"Based on hypothesis 1, the test revealed that government regulation has a significant impact on relationship quality, so managers as business leaders must first ensure that the Blockchain implemented by the company complies with the regulations and standards set by the government, which is very important to ensure that users are not worried about whether the Blockchain they use is legal or not. " 

Such statements can easily break into two or more to convey the message adequately. 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 1

The following comments are for possible improvements to the article.

1) Authors should review and include some more Blockchain applications from recent literature. In the introduction and the literature review authors should link the benefits/requirement of a considered study with current Blockchain applications.

Thank you very much for your valuable suggestions. We included several blockchain technologies and their applications; for instance, in sub-section 2.4, “Blockchain functional benefits,” we mentioned recent blockchain-related literature [6][14][18][21][35]. You may check in page 2, line 47, 58, 93, page 3 line 110 and 141.

2) Can the results be biased towards the geographical locations of the users considered during the survey, or they can be generalized worldwide? The real question is can societies and/or local governments have different opinions about blockchain technology. If the answer is yes, how should companies mitigate such effects while utilizing the resources of this study?

Thank you very much for raising this critical issue. Yes, the reviewer is right. Our results can be specific to the locations where users use blockchain technology. Therefore, our findings shed some light, in particular, on which salient factors have a significant effect on blockchain usage intention within the study context. In order to converge the various opinions, the companies might continuously educate the users about blockchain's overall benefits and functions. In so doing, users will have the same perception of the concept of blockchain wherever they are.

3) Will the results be applicable to all types of Blockchain techniques?

Thank you very much for raising this question. Since we use the term blockchain as in general term (not a specific application), we might argue that, to some extent, this research can apply to all blockchain applications. However, as mentioned in our study limitation, we did not explore the differences between different blockchains applications and how they would affect the variables included in this current study. Therefore, our findings should be used with caution, and future studies might replicate our study to investigate this matter empirically. You may check it in page 16 to 17, line 498 to 515.

4) Article seems to be written well. However, do check it for possible grammatical/structural mistakes. For example,

 "The value of security, transparency, and privacy can also be offered to users via the technical features of blockchain.." remove additional punctuation marks.

"Based on hypothesis 1, the test revealed that government regulation has a significant impact on relationship quality, so managers as business leaders must first ensure that the Blockchain implemented by the company complies with the regulations and standards set by the government, which is very important to ensure that users are not worried about whether the Blockchain they use is legal or not. " 

Such statements can easily break into two or more to convey the message adequately. 

Thank you very much for pointing out the mistakes. We have revised them accordingly. You may check it in page 14 line 439 to 451.

Reviewer 2 Report

The submitted paper is devoted to studying the role of blockchain in modern people's life. The research shows what importance has this technology in recent times. After manuscript reading, it was some recommendation given:

1) Please, put in text-specific citations with such brackets ([]) to the relevant tables and figures, because I didn't find, for example, the quotes to table 1 and table 4. Please check others.;

2) In chapter 4 (page 7), the next sentence: “According to a survey conducted by [25], Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, rank third in the world after the US and India in terms of growth of Blockchain usage” cannot be enough justification that “Therefore, it is appropriate that the respondents in this study are Indonesian”. In my opinion, this statement of choosing a demographic category (Indonesian) for the survey must be justified better because the described survey was conducted in 2021 [25], and maybe it was another tendency in 2022;

3) (page 7 before Table 2) Please, specify what criteria were taken into account to exclude 29 inexperienced blockchain users from the general sampling. It will be good if this nuance will be in more detail described by 2-3 additional sentences.

4) I have some confusion after reading Table 2 because after the survey we have 489 data from respondents. But, according to demographic dividing in Table 2 we see that gender in total – 308+181=489 – ok; age in total – 48+195+97+146=486 – incorrect; Education Level – 48+210+229=487 – also incorrect. It may be this simple technical mistake, please recheck.;

5) Figure 1, please, provide what are differences mean between the categories ‘Trust’ and ‘Satisfactions’. Are these factors of relationship quality equal?

6) Table 3, I couldn't find how values for inner VIF were found. This aspect must be additionally explained before a table;

7) Figure 2, how was R2 calculated for RQ and BUI? Please, explain in the manuscript.

8) Please, add the next parts: Author Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest and others.

 

 

Author Response

Reviewer 2

The submitted paper is devoted to studying the role of blockchain in modern people's life. The research shows what importance has this technology in recent times. After manuscript reading, it was some recommendation given:

1) Please, put in text-specific citations with such brackets ([]) to the relevant tables and figures, because I didn't find, for example, the quotes to table 1 and table 4. Please check others.;

Thank you very much for your valuable comments. We actually have added the brackets in the table. For example in table 1, the last column “source” included the brackets. You may check it in page 5 to 6, line 242. And also table 4 page 9 to 10, line 342.

2) In chapter 4 (page 7), the next sentence: “According to a survey conducted by [25], Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, rank third in the world after the US and India in terms of growth of Blockchain usage” cannot be enough justification that “Therefore, it is appropriate that the respondents in this study are Indonesian”. In my opinion, this statement of choosing a demographic category (Indonesian) for the survey must be justified better because the described survey was conducted in 2021 [25], and maybe it was another tendency in 2022;

Thank you very much for your constructive comments. We altered the sentence to “According to a survey conducted by [25], Southeast Asian countries, including Indonesia, rank third in the world after the US and India in terms of growth of Blockchain usage. Furthermore, Indonesia currently has the fourth largest population in the world. Due its large size population, thus this study is appropriate to use Indonesians as the study context to represent the blockchain users.”

3) (page 7 before Table 2) Please, specify what criteria were taken into account to exclude 29 inexperienced blockchain users from the general sampling. It will be good if this nuance will be in more detail described by 2-3 additional sentences.

Thank you for your valuable suggestions. The additional sentences are added “The reason for this is that inexperienced users might not have enough knowledge about blockchain and its applications when answering our survey questionnaire, thus affecting the validity and reliability of our study.” You may check it in page 7 line 302 to 314

4) I have some confusion after reading Table 2 because after the survey we have 489 data from respondents. But, according to demographic dividing in Table 2 we see that gender in total – 308+181=489 – ok; age in total – 48+195+97+146=486 – incorrect; Education Level – 48+210+229=487 – also incorrect. It may be this simple technical mistake, please recheck.;

Thank you very much for pointing out our technical mistakes. We have revised table 2 accordingly.

5) Figure 1, please, provide what are differences mean between the categories ‘Trust’ and ‘Satisfactions’. Are these factors of relationship quality equal?

Thank you very much for your comment. Relationship quality mean a second order formatif contruct, that why trust and satisfaction put it in relationship quality part.

 

6) Table 3, I couldn't find how values for inner VIF were found. This aspect must be additionally explained before a table;

Thank you very much for your comments. Inner VIF values were automatically generated using SmartPLS application. It was already explained in the sentence “VIF analysis was performed to validate the model's application and to test for multicollinearity among the constructs. The SmartPLS calculation results provide a low VIF value. According to Hair et al [50], the VIF value for variables should be 5.0. According to Table 3, the inner VIF value for variables should be 5.0. In this research, the inner VIF value ranges from 1.000 to 2.640, as shown in Table 3, indicating that there is no multicollinearity effect among the latent constructs.”  You may check it in page 8 line 325 to 330.

7) Figure 2, how was R2 calculated for RQ and BUI? Please, explain in the manuscript.

Thank you very much for your comments. Similar to point 6, R² values were automatically generated by SmartPLS application. We added the following explanation in the manuscript “In addition, R² value reveals 0.578 for RQ and 0.472 for BUI. This means RQ can be explained by the four antecedents for 57.8%. Meanwhile, BUI can be explained by RQ for 47.2%.”

8) Please, add the next parts: Author Contributions, Funding, Conflicts of Interest and others.

Thank you very much for your comment. We made it such as suggested.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for addressing the comments. I didn't have any further questions/ suggestions.