This thesis examines key considerations in blockchain adoption, drawing insights from academic studies (Chapter 1), industrial practitioners (Chapter 2), and general users (Chapter 3). Chapter 1 lays the groundwork through a systematic review of organisational blockchain adoption factors. It offers a comprehensive synthesis of existing studies, identifies patterns in thematic development, and distils trust and privacy as two pivotal yet underexamined themes. While blockchain was initially lauded for its ability to enhance trust, new evidence shows that trust itself can become an adoption barrier, requiring confidence not only in the technology but also among trading partners. Chapter 2 uses a grounded theory approach to uncover how organisations can build the trust necessary for blockchain initiatives, illuminating strategies to tackle trust-related obstacles. On the privacy side, the traditional view of privacy as a barrier – due to transparency versus privacy tensions and regulatory conflicts – has shifted. Emerging privacy-preserving techniques recast privacy as a potential driver of adoption, while the digital age highlights privacy’s broader societal implications. Chapter 3 employs a survey experiment to investigate whether raising awareness of privacy’s social value (reflecting data externalities) can encourage individual users to adopt blockchain solutions for data protection, thereby aligning organisational interests with user acceptance.

Together, these chapters advance blockchain adoption research by synthesising fragmented knowledge, offering strategic pathways to overcome trust-related barriers, and demonstrating how privacy’s social value awareness can drive broader adoption. Beyond blockchain, this thesis introduces methodological refinements, including a mixed-methods toolbox for literature reviews, and offers novel theoretical insights on trust formation and privacy protection – extending its implications to trust research in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and enriching privacy discussions in the digital age, increasingly influenced by data disclosure externalities.