Exploring User Acceptance of Blockchain-Based Student Certificate Sharing System: A Study on Non Fungible Token (NFT) Utilization

TL;DR

This study investigates user acceptance of a blockchain-based academic credential sharing system utilizing NFTs, highlighting key factors influencing adoption and emphasizing the importance of user attitude over ease of use.

Contribution

It extends the Technology Acceptance Model to include blockchain-specific elements, providing empirical insights into factors affecting user intention to adopt NFT-based credential sharing systems.

Findings

Attitude towards the system significantly influences perceived usefulness.

Perceived ease of use has an insignificant impact on intention to use.

The model's constructs collectively have a statistically significant effect on user acceptance.

Abstract

Blockchain technology has emerged as a transformative tool for data management in a variety of industries, including fintech, research and healthcare. We have developed a workable blockchain based system that utilizes non fungible tokens NFTs to tokenize and prove ownership of the academic institutions credentials. This makes it easier to create provenance and ownership documentation for academic data and meta credentials. This system enables the secure sharing of academic information while maintaining control, offering incentives for collaboration, and granting users full transparency and control over data access. While the initial adoption of these systems is crucial for ongoing service usage, the exploration of the user acceptance behavioural model remains limited in the existing literature. In this paper, we build upon the Technology Acceptance Model TAM, incorporating additional elements to scrutinize the impact of perceived ease of use, perceived usability, and attitude towards the system on the intention to use a blockchain based academic data and meta credentials sharing system. The research, grounded in user evaluations of a prototype, employs a TAM validated questionnaire. Results indicate that individual constructs notably affect the intention to use the system, and their collective impact is statistically significant. Specifically, perceived ease of use is the sole factor with an insignificant influence on the intention to use. The paper underscores the dominant influence of attitude towards the system on perceived usefulness. It concludes with a discussion on the implications of these findings within the context of blockchain based academic data and meta credentials sharing, incorporating NFTs for ownership definition.