Studying the Impact of Blockchain Technology on Maritime Trade with Focusing on Identifying and Prioritizing the Underlying Factors for its Adoption in Iran’s Maritime Trade

Blockchain is a novel and disruptive technology that has the potential to transform the current international business and trade processes that rely on traditional intermediaries. It is a distributed ledger that verifies and records transactions using a peer-to-peer network over time in a sequence of blocks, secured by cryptographic functions that are complex, immutable and tamper-proof. International maritime trade, which is the main mode of global transportation, expects to change its business model by adopting blockchain, which enables a decentralized architecture of international transactions without intermediaries and facilitates paperless trade. Moreover, blockchain aims to address the problems and inefficiencies that plague maritime trade. However, there are key factors that influence the adoption of blockchain in maritime trade that need to be investigated in order to successfully implement this technology in the future. This study examined the impact of blockchain technology on maritime trade and identified the factors affecting its acceptance in Iranian maritime trade using the research background, literature review and interviews with experts who were PMO managers. These factors were validated by the Delphi method and then categorized and prioritized using the theoretical framework of technology, organization, environment (TOE) and analytical hierarchy process. The results indicated that “blockchain benefits” in the “technology” dimension, “human resource capability” in the “organization” dimension and “government support and policy” in the “environment” dimension were ranked first. These findings could assist the stakeholders in Iran’s maritime trade, such as ports, customs, government agencies, and transportation logistics companies, in developing strategies for the successful adoption and advancement of blockchain and enhancing their organizational competitiveness.