Serial mediation of social and regulatory factors in BIM adoption: evidence from Vietnamese contractors

Purpose This study investigates how performance expectancy (PEX) and organisational and financial readiness (OFR) are associated with contractor's intention to BIM adoption (COI) through the sequential roles of social influence (SOI) and the regulatory and policy environment (RPE) in the Vietnamese construction sector. Design/methodology/approach Grounded in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework, institutional theory and the resource-based view (RBV), the study employed a two-phase design. Phase 1 utilised the fuzzy Delphi method to refine 22 indicators into a 14-item instrument informed by expert-consensus scores. Phase 2 tests seven hypotheses through partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to evaluate the proposed serial mediation paths. Findings All seven hypotheses were supported. RPE was the sole significant direct predictor of adoption intention; SOI showed the strongest association with RPE; and OFR showed the strongest path to SOI, consistent with transmission through SOI ? RPE ? COI. A supplementary robustness check found that RPE significantly predicted SOI in the reverse ordering, but the bootstrapped indirect effect of the full reverse chain (RPE ? SOI ? COI) was non-significant, indicating the reverse chain is not supported as a mediating pathway. Originality/value The study proposes and provides preliminary evidence for a sequential process model of BIM adoption in the Vietnamese, predominantly BIM-experienced contractor sample, offering an incremental theoretical contribution relative to existing parallel-antecedent frameworks: rather than introducing new constructs, it tests an alternative ordering among constructs already established in the technology-adoption, TOE, institutional and resource-based literatures, within a single developing-country sample. The findings suggest that social and regulatory factors may function as transmission pathways linking technical and organisational capabilities to adoption intention: a theoretically coherent but cross-sectionally tested proposition that warrants longitudinal replication.