Blockchain Informational Attributes, Trust, and Inter-Organizational Collaboration in Construction Projects
Inter-organizational construction projects depend on intensive information exchange, interface coordination, and joint action among multiple organizations. However, their temporary, fragmented, and multi-actor nature often creates information asymmetry, unclear responsibility attribution, and weak trust foundations, thereby increasing collaboration costs and reducing governance efficiency. Although blockchain technology is often considered capable of addressing these problems through tamper-resistant records, transparent sharing, and smart contract execution, existing studies remain largely focused on technical functions or application scenarios. Less attention has been paid to how blockchain influences trust formation and inter-organizational collaboration through informational governance mechanisms. To address this gap, this study adopts a conceptual theory-building research design and develops a governance-oriented framework explaining how blockchain-enabled informational attributes affect trust and collaboration in construction projects. The study conceptualizes the blockchain’s governance role as an informational governance mechanism rather than a mere technical deployment, focusing on four informational attributes embedded in project transaction records: security, fidelity/authenticity, transparency, and procedural consistency. It further distinguishes interpersonal trust from inter-organizational trust, arguing that blockchain informational attributes may shape both interaction-based trust among boundary spanners and organization-level collaboration expectations. Interpersonal trust may also inform broader trust judgments toward partner organizations. At the collaboration level, the study conceptualizes inter-organizational collaboration as a process structure consisting of coordination and cooperation, with coordination creating conditions for deeper cooperation. The resulting framework links blockchain informational attributes, dual-level trust, coordination, and cooperation, and develops hypotheses for future empirical testing. This study contributes by shifting construction blockchain research from technology adoption and functional description toward informational governance explanation, extending dual-level trust logic into blockchain-enabled construction project governance, and applying the coordination–cooperation process logic to unpack how blockchain-enabled informational governance may influence inter-organizational collaboration.