Leveraging blockchain and contracts in fresh agricultural supply chains with information asymmetry

This study investigates a two-echelon fresh agricultural supply chain plagued by information asymmetry, where a supplier possesses private information regarding product freshness. The strategic distortion of this freshness information leads to escalated supply chain losses and diminished operational efficiency. Employing a game-theoretic model, we analyze how the integration of blockchain technology and contractual mechanisms can mitigate the adverse effects of such information asymmetry. Our analysis identifies the critical parameters that govern the thresholds for blockchain adoption and its requisite investment. Furthermore, a comparative evaluation reveals distinct optimal decision-making patterns for supply chain members under varying operational conditions. The principal findings are threefold: first, the supplier’s misrepresentation of freshness information generates private benefits at the expense of both the retailer’s profit and total supply chain welfare; second, the effectiveness of blockchain is parameter-dependent, indicating its non-universal applicability; and third, in low transaction-cost scenarios, contractual solutions can achieve informational accuracy comparable to blockchain, thereby challenging the presumed superiority of technological interventions. This research provides dual theoretical and managerial insights for mitigating informational opacity, offering evidence-based guidelines for optimizing blockchain deployment and designing contractual coordination frameworks. The findings establish pragmatic decision criteria for selecting appropriate countermeasures tailored to specific operational parameters.