Employees’ behavioural intentions as a mediator of artificial intelligence adoption: a UTAUT-TOE study of Chinese small and medium-sized apparel manufacturing enterprises

Abstract While artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping China’s manufacturing industry, its implementation in the labour-intensive apparel manufacturing sector remains constrained by limited digitalisation and relatively low technological readiness. To address this gap, this study examined how employees’ behavioural intentions mediate the relationships between key technological, organisational, environmental, and social predictors and organisations’ decisions to adopt AI in the Chinese apparel manufacturing sector. We combined the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology with the technological-organisational-environmental framework and evaluated the resulting model using partial least squares structural equation modelling with paired responses from 200 managers and 200 technicians representing 200 Chinese small- and medium-sized apparel manufacturing firms. The results showed a significant negative indirect effect of performance expectancy (β = −0.081, p = .037) and significant positive indirect effects of peer influence (β = 0.232, p = .002) and regional context (β = 0.501, p < .001) on organisational AI adoption decisions through employees’ behavioural intentions. For organisational AI adoption decisions, the model accounted for 71.4% of the observed variance. These findings highlight the mediating role of employees’ behavioural intentions in organisational AI adoption and provide theoretical and practical insights for promoting AI adoption in small and medium-sized enterprises in Chinese apparel manufacturing.