Abstract/Summary

Global seafood supply chains are fragmented, complex, and non-transparent, resulting in a lack of sufficient traceability and often raising concerns about their integrity. In such diverse supply chains, several stakeholders lack an integrated view of the whole supply chain. This low transparency creates various obstacles and intricacies related to food safety, security, traceability, and verification practices. Among all kinds of seafood, shrimp is one of the most traded and consumed products. However, complex shrimp supply chains often lack traceability, and have noted frequent occurrences of contamination frauds and food safety incidents. India is one of the top shrimp producers and exporters but frequently faces food safety concerns due to banned antibiotic detection in exports. The lack of visibility in the Indian Shrimp Supply Chain (ISSC) makes it challenging to address these concerns and comply with export standards, affecting consumer trust. The existing literature shows a significant gap in exploring innovative technology in ISSC solutions to address these challenges. Therefore, this thesis investigates the adoption of Blockchain Technology (BT), which promises to offer end-to-end transparency and trust with enhanced traceability in the ISSC. Thus, this thesis aims to explore ISSC stakeholder views on BT adoption and investigate consumer preferences for BT traceable shrimps. First, we conducted qualitative in-depth interviews with ISSC stakeholders to understand their perceptions and opinions on the existing sector challenges, solutions, and benefits and costs of BT adoption in ISSC. The findings revealed that most ISSC stakeholders are enthusiastic about adopting BT, as it enhances transparency and visibility in the sector by providing immutable and real-time data availability. Additionally, stakeholders agreed to accept higher initial costs, which would eventually decrease as BT matures. Second, the US is the top shrimp market for Indian shrimps, and thus, we used discrete choice experiments to study US consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for BT traceable shrimp. Our results indicate a high willingness of shrimp consumers to pay a premium for BT-certified shrimp. Furthermore, we observed heterogeneity among consumers, where young consumers from high-income groups with children under 18 in households showed a higher WTP for BT-certified shrimp. Communication messages with food safety benefits of BT noted the highest WTP. Lastly, consumers have shown positive acceptance of and readiness for BT.