Promoting Sustainable Product Authenticity through Digital Supply Chain Integration and Collaboration: Insights from an Experimental Study

Prior literature lacks explaining how digital supply chain (SC) integration affects SC collaboration and sustainable product authenticity and how these effects vary depending on the transparency level (high vs. low) across different platforms (blockchain vs. non-blockchain). We conceptualized digital SC integration using three dimensions: information, operational, and relational integration. We conducted an experiment and collected the data from 346 employees. The study findings suggested that information and relational integration are significant for SC collaboration, which, in turn, enables sustainable product authenticity. We also observed that a high transparency level positively influences the association between operational integration and SC collaboration, except in the case of a blockchain platform where the impact of transparency is weakened. These findings assisted us in obtaining a more granular understanding of how digital SC integration is instrumental in promoting SC collaboration and enhancing sustainable product authenticity. We discuss theoretical and managerial implications based on these findings.