Blockchain Implementation Challenges in Developing Countries: An evidence-based systematic review and bibliometric analysis

Contemporary research on technology and innovation management has gauged blockchain as a catalyst for the electronic-information era. As developing countries around the globe are facing challenges to adopt and implement blockchain, this evidence-based systematic review aims to identify the implementation challenges of blockchain technology for developing countries. A total of 1,298 published documents during the period 2016-2021 from the Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect databases were explored to recognize 19 appropriate publications for research analysis using a PRISMA flow diagram. Based on the identified challenges from the thorough reviews of these 19 publications, using the association technique, the authors developed four comprehensive themes as broad challenges: technological, governance, organizational and environmental, and knowledge. Later, they performed bibliometric analyses using VOSviewer 1.6.17, and based on the bibliometric evidence constructed term co-occurrence network plots. The results show that developing countries face challenges vis-à-vis technological, governance, organizational and environmental, and knowledge issues when implementing blockchain technology. Hence, to make blockchain adoption and implementation processes successful in developing countries, these broad categories of challenges must be properly addressed. In addition, practitioners of disruptive technology, policymakers, consultants, IT experts, business people, top company managers, and above all, respective governments need to pay attention to these challenges for accelerating the blockchain adoption and implementation process in developing countries.