Evaluation of barriers to sustainable building materials adoption through the lens of the theory of planned behavior

Purpose Although sustainable building materials (SBMs) have long been promoted to foster sustainable construction, their adoption faces numerous challenges and is still at a low rate. This study aims to identify and rank the barriers to SBM adoption in the Vietnamese construction industry. Design/methodology/approach A list of 16 barriers was first developed through a comprehensive literature review and discussions with experienced practitioners. Subsequently, the snowball sampling technique facilitated the collection of 218 responses in the survey after the questionnaire was developed. Then, data collection was performed by questionnaire surveys. Confirmatory factor analysis was employed to validate the structure of the model. After that, fuzzy synthetic evaluation (FSE) was used to evaluate the importance of the barriers to SBM adoption. Findings Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that barriers to SBM adoption were categorized into four groups: lack of awareness and information, unready market, insufficient regulations and skilled labor shortage. Among these obstacles, the fuzzy synthetic evaluation highlighted that the lack of awareness and information was the most critical barrier. The theory of planned behavior offers a valuable lens through which to examine individuals’ attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control concerning barriers to adopting SBMs. Originality/value This study addresses the existing research gap where limited theoretical support exists for understanding the obstacles to SBMs’ adoption. The results offer decision-makers a comprehensive framework to assess barriers and facilitate the adoption of SBMs in the construction sector.