Digital Pathways to Efficiency: A Multi-Stakeholder Assessment of Sri Lanka’s Marine Fish Supply Chain Logistics

Background: Studies of fish supply chain efficiency often rely on price spreads or frontier-based measures, which do not fully capture actor-level coordination performance in heterogeneous, informal supply chains. This study addresses this gap by developing a composite Market Efficiency Index (MEI) that integrates financial performance, operational quality, service equity, and relational governance. Methods: The MEI, a multidimensional alternative to frontier-based measures, was developed and applied to data collected from 250 supply chain actors in Sri Lanka. Results: The results show a clear efficiency gradient along the supply chain, with fishers scoring the lowest (MEI = 0.44), intermediaries moderate (MEI = 0.54), and retailers the highest (MEI = 0.67), yielding an overall system efficiency of 0.55 and relational governance emerging as the weakest system-level dimension. These results indicate persistent structural differences in value distribution and in how well the fish supply chain functions as a cohesive network, driven by liquidity constraints, information asymmetry, and weak cold-chain infrastructure. Conclusions: A multidimensional supply chain assessment provides a more effective basis for diagnosing coordination constraints and enables targeted digital interventions that offer feasible pathways to improve transparency, liquidity, and inclusiveness in smallholder-dominated fish supply chains.