An evolutionary game analysis on blockchain technology adoption in cross-border e-commerce

Blockchain technology has advantages of decentralization, traceability and tamper-proofing characteristics, supporting to solve the financial security, digital authentication and traceability obstacles in cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) industry. However, little research discusses the adoption behavior of blockchain technology in e-commerce sector. This paper shifts to the blockchain technology adoption in CBEC by formulating an evolutionary game model, consisting of CBEC platforms and the merchants. The decision-making behaviors of CBEC platforms and the merchants are analyzed and discussed regarding on blockchain technology adoption. Besides, the equilibrium solutions are derived, and the numerical simulation test is performed to discover the effect of segmental parameters on the blockchain technology adoption strategy. Results show that when platforms collect smaller profit proportion from merchant, they prefer to adopt blockchain technology, while the platform merchants tend not to blockchain technology adoption at initial stage. With the evolutional game, merchants tend to select blockchain technology strategy. When the platforms collect a higher information cost, both the CBEC platforms and merchants prefer to adopt blockchain technology. The evolutionary analysis and numerical test are performed to help better understanding blockchain technology adoption behavior and the blockchain technology application promotion.