Abstract/Summary

This study identifies barriers to and drivers of sustainable development and commercial scaling-up of Tanzania’s fisheries resources by exploring a market-based approach to improving traceability in fisheries to overcome these barriers. Data collection from Tanzanian and European stakeholders used Grounded Theory (GT) analytical framework. Lack of trust, credibility, and inadequacies in public governance were barriers that created opportunities for local and foreign rogue actors to unsustainably overexploit Tanzanian fisheries resources. A Basic Social Process (BSP) called Fishmining, which captured these barriers, was derived using the GT methodology. Literature on resolving these barriers suggested that market-based mechanisms would potentially increase transparency and traceability to improve accountability for sustainability in fisheries. A Blockchain technology-based traceability solution was thus devised, based on successful case studies in other developing countries, for testing in the Tanzanian context. A large-scale survey tested Tanzania’s marine and freshwater fishers’ willingness to accept/adopt this solution. An extension of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) conceptual framework explained the drivers of willingness to accept/adopt this solution, modelled using Partial Least Squares–Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The solution’s proposed monthly price of US$100.00 attracted fishers’ potential uptake rates of over 80%. Overall, the PLS-SEM model explained 38.5% of variations in the fishers’ Behavioural Intention to accept/adopt the solution, with more explanatory power in marine (43.6%) than freshwater (38.8%). Four drivers influenced positively and directly the fishers’ intention: Complementary Technology, Effort Expectancy, Performance Expectancy, and Price Value. Also found were moderating and mediating effects that invariably revealed the drivers’ influence on fishers’ intention. Therefore, attaining sustainable development and commercial scaling-up of the fisheries resources requires increased uptake of this solution whose features of transparency and traceability enhance accountability through identification and mitigation of stakeholder trust issues and governance problems along the fisheries supply and value chains.