The increasing demand by international customers for high-quality shrimp products has led to the introduction of various certificates of traceability intended to validate quality products in Vietnam. The Vietnamese good agricultural practices (VietGAP), better known in aquaculture as the Vietnamese good aquaculture practices, has emerged as a reliable certificate for small-scale farmers and a prerequisite for international certification. This study investigates factors affecting applications for VietGAP by small-scale shrimp farmers in Vietnam. Cost-benefit analysis and binary logistic regression approaches were used to categorise shrimp farms with and without VietGAP certification. Findings indicated that while the adoption of VietGAP raised production costs by 14.5 %, it could increase net profit by up to 22 %. The increase in net profit is from increased productivity and antibiotics and chemical-free products in shrimp farming, helped fetch better prices. The results also revealed three factors that positively influenced the farmers’ decision to acquire VietGAP; education, farm size, and production system. Shrimp farmers with longer schooling years, larger farms, and those who possess cooperative/farming cluster membership are more likely to acquire VietGAP certification. The results imply that the VietGAP certification should be better promoted to cooperative production forms of farming, by strengthening the schooling year of farmers and increasing awareness of VietGAP certification to farmers who operate shrimp farms of 5,000–9,000 m2 .