This study investigates the factors affecting Industry 4.0 adoption in the curriculum of university students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Universities need to respond to the changing faces of Industry 4.0 and, hence, Education 4.0. A mixed method including both qualitative and quantitative methodologies was utilized. An in-depth interview was carried out for exploring, reviewing, and testing content validity of constructs and measurement items. The pilot study was conducted with 120 respondents. The conceptual model and hypotheses were developed using data collected by a questionnaire survey distributed to 584 respondents by both electronic and paper forms with nonprobability and convenience sampling techniques. The result of structural equation modeling showed that occupation relevance, skills, facility conditions, and social influence impacted on the intermediates variables, namely, relevance advantage, perceived usefulness, behavioral intention-to-use, and actual use. The independent variables are occupation relevance, skills, facility conditions, and social influence. They impact actual use through mediating constructs such as relevance advantage, perceived usefulness, and behavioral intention-to-use. The findings suggest that universities and students’ efforts aimed at increasing the factors’ perceptions of adoption of Industry 4.0 will contribute to implementation success, where success is defined as effectual usage of Industry 4.0.

The fourth industrial revolution has attracted much academic attention in these past few years. However, research on systematic and extensive factors affecting adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in developing countries, especially in Vietnam, has been unavailable. This study aims to explore the impact of factors that influence the actual adoption of Industry 4.0 by SMEs in Ho Chi Minh City. Mixed-method research was utilized in this study including in-depth interviews of 12 participants and quantitative research of 396 respondents who are representative of SMEs by both online and via paper surveys. The SPSS and SmartPLS 3 software were employed to help analyze the collected data. The results indicate that perceived development of the human resource, perceived on-time, perceived saving cost, perceived improve product quality, perceived saving time, perceived ease-of-use, business resources, and conditions of the business environment, perceived usefulness, perceived enhanced customer relationship, and adoption intention, all have a positive significant effect on actual adoption of Industry 4.0. The results seem to suggest that managerial efforts aimed at increasing the factors’ perceptions of adoption of Industry 4.0 and personal relevance of the technology will contribute to implementation success, where success is defined as effectual usage of the Industry 4.0.