Dr Ikram Nur Muharam

Blockchain could disrupt traditional accommodation services by enabling safe, decentralised direct connections between guests and hosts. However, how users will accept and use blockchain-based services in tourism and hospitality remains unascertained. This study explores users’ perceptions of a blockchain-based peer-to-peer accommodation system and sets a theoretical basis to conceptualise the drivers of the acceptability of such system. By using a grounded theory approach involving theoretical sampling and three steps of coding and constant comparison procedures, this study revealed that users were drawn to the system because it delivers desirable characteristics that are absent from existing services, such as further reduction of transaction fees, instant transaction settlement, wider income distribution, data integrity, algorithm autonomy, and smart protocol. Personal and social contexts were also found to influence users’ preferences for blockchain type and system ownership models. By offering key predictors and a theoretical model of user acceptance of a blockchain-based peer-to-peer accommodation system, hence taking a bottom-up approach to complement the highly top-down extant literature, this paper allows stakeholders exploring the use of blockchain technology in the tourism and hospitality sectors to have a comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon.

This study employs a sequential exploratory mixed-methods approach to investigate users' perspectives and acceptability of blockchain-based sharing economy systems. The suggested model explains how users' perceptions of specific features of such concepts influence acceptance in ways that existing theories like TPB, TAM, or UTAUT cannot. The results revealed that user empowerment was the most significant factor influencing acceptance. Furthermore, multigroup analysis (MGA) demonstrates how different contexts have distinct acceptance predictors. Depending on the context, perceived lower fees, perceived faster settlement, perceived income distribution, perceived fraudproof, and perceived traceability had varying significance. Meanwhile, perceived immutability, perceived process automation, and perceived transparency, even though considered appealing, were not significant in influencing acceptance. The findings imply that stakeholders should balance technicality and behavioural aspects, and be aware of the context.

This study investigates how exposure to local prices changes the transaction utility of international tourists, and the role of purchasing power parity (PPP) and the use of cryptocurrency in these changes. Findings indicate that tourists’ transaction utility did not vary all that much when they visited a country with comparable PPP to their own. Meanwhile, when traveling to countries with a lower PPP, tourists enjoy a heightened transaction utility. Furthermore, using Bitcoin results in greater transaction utility than using fiat currency.