Examining the Effects of Quality and Psychological Dimensions on Industrial Customers’ Acceptance of Emerging Nanotechnology

Abstract

Objective: This study examines the effects of Garvin’s eight dimensions of quality and two psychological dimensions—perceived risk and trust—on industrial customers’ acceptance of nanotechnology in an ethylene nano-adsorbent system used for fruit and vegetable preservation.

Methods and Materials: This applied, cross-sectional survey study employed a 40-item questionnaire using a five-point Likert scale. A total of 213 respondents (71 owners, 71 sales managers, and 71 quality managers) from 100 companies operating in Iran’s fruit supply chain were included in the analysis. Following preliminary analyses, including descriptive statistics, one-sample t tests against the scale midpoint of 12, one-way analysis of variance, and Tukey’s HSD post hoc test, the structural model was estimated using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples. The robustness of the results was additionally assessed using company-level cluster bootstrapping. Differences across organizational roles were examined through multigroup analysis using the measurement invariance of composites (MICOM) procedure and permutation tests.

Findings: The mean score for all ten dimensions was significantly higher than the scale midpoint (all p < .001; Cohen’s d = 0.60–1.86). The highest perceptions were observed for aesthetics (16.22 out of 20), performance (16.06), and conformance (15.85), whereas the lowest were observed for perceived quality (13.99), durability (14.45), and serviceability (14.46). Significant differences among the three organizational roles were found for nine dimensions (η² = 0.085–0.296); perceived risk was the only dimension that showed no significant difference (p = .213). Quality managers scored higher than owners on all dimensions except perceived risk. In the structural model, six paths were significant: trust (β = 0.28), perceived quality (β = 0.21), perceived risk (β = 0.19), performance (β = 0.18), reliability (β = 0.15), and conformance (β = 0.12). The paths for serviceability, aesthetics, features, and durability were nonsignificant; therefore, H1b, H1e, H1g, and H1h were rejected. The model explained 58% of the variance in acceptance (R² = 0.58; Q² = 0.41; SRMR = 0.061) and demonstrated satisfactory out-of-sample predictive power. In the multigroup analysis, differences in path coefficients across organizational roles were generally nonsignificant. Only the perceived quality path differed between owners and quality managers at the Bonferroni-adjusted significance level of .0167. The difference in the perceived risk path between these two groups (p = .030) was significant only at the unadjusted .05 level.

Conclusion: The structural findings indicate that trust, perceived quality, and perceived risk are the most important predictors of acceptance. Accordingly, vendors should simultaneously emphasize transparency and trust building, improve perceived quality, and reduce safety-related concerns.