Toward sustainable logistics in emerging economies: Identifying ESG barriers using neutrosophic Delphi-DEMATEL model

The growing global emphasis on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) practices has placed increasing pressure on emerging economies, including Vietnam, to integrate sustainability into key industries such as logistics. However, ESG implementation in Vietnam’s logistics sector faces numerous interrelated challenges. This study employs a two-stage Neutrosophic Delphi-DEMATEL (NS-Delphi and NS-DEMATEL) method to systematically identify and analyze the causal relationships among eight key barrier dimensions: Legal and Compliance, Institutional, Economic, Psychological and Behavioral, Environmental, Social, Governance, and Technological. The results reveal that Legal and Compliance, Institutional, Economic, Psychological, and Behavioral barriers serve as the core causal dimensions that significantly influence the remaining effect dimensions. Notably, weak legal enforcement, unclear regulatory mandates, institutional capacity limitations, financial constraints, and behavioral inertia were the most influential impediments to ESG adoption. In contrast, environmental degradation, poor stakeholder engagement, governance inefficiencies, and low technological uptake were identified as outcome variables shaped by upstream barriers. The study offers practical policy implications, including the need for mandatory ESG regulations, enforcement reforms, capacity building, and targeted green finance mechanisms. Managerial recommendations include conducting ESG audits, aligning sustainability strategies with business objectives, and enhancing ESG-related competencies across organizations. The study contributes to ESG literature by providing a causal framework tailored to emerging market contexts and highlights directions for future research, including comparative analysis and hybrid multi-criteria modeling.