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As the largest construction industry in the world, the Chinese construction industry not only has huge sustainability implications for China, but also significantly influences the world’s resource consumption due to its tremendous scale. However, there is a lack of studies identifying the fundamental challenges hindering the transformation towards sustainable construction in China from a holistic triple bottom line perspective of sustainability. This study aims to identify the challenges, thereby revealing the future research directions accelerating the transition towards sustainable construction in China. Through content analysis of both existing literature and government plans, this study identifies the key sustainability challenges, governmental measures, and critical future research opportunities to help tackle the challenges hindering the sustainability transition of the Chinese construction industry. Even though this study focuses on China, it provides a holistic reference for researchers, industry practitioners and policymakers worldwide to understand the sustainability challenges of the construction industry, as the construction industries in many countries face sustainability challenges similar to those in China.

Household energy-saving interventions are essential in reducing energy consumption in residential buildings. One of the effective interventions is Household Energy-Saving Option (HESO). However, the pricing strategy of this innovative intervention has not been explored. This study aims to establish a feasible valuation strategy for HESO to facilitate the application of market-based energy-saving interventions among households. This study first provides a pricing strategy of HESO from a market zero-profit perspective. It continues by developing a price cap and floor for HESO's market price. The theoretical pricing model was validated by a field experiment consisting of two-tiered HESO trading among 67 households in Singapore. The results revealed decisive implications for both environmental policymakers and HESO suppliers. Policymakers are suggested to launch HESO in countries or regions with stable and relatively high electricity prices and low discount rates. HESO suppliers may choose to adjust rewards and duration accordingly when the market price deviates from the zero-profit equilibrium price of HESO. The valuation strategy of HESO also helps quantitative estimation of households' perceived value of HESO.

Residential buildings are one of the major contributors to climate change due to their significant impacts on global energy consumption. Hence, most countries have introduced regulations to minimize energy use in residential buildings. To date, the focus of these regulations has mainly been on operational energy while excluding embodied energy. In recent years, extensive studies have highlighted the necessity of minimizing both embodied energy and operational energy by applying the life-cycle energy assessment (LCEA) approach. However, the absence of a standardized framework and calculation methodology for the analysis of embodied energy has reportedly led to variations in the LCEA results. Retrospective research endeavoured to explore the causes of variations, with a limited focus on calculating embodied impacts. Despite the undertaken attempts, there is still a need to investigate the key parameters causing variations in LCEA results by examining methodological approaches of the current studies toward quantifications of embodied and operational energies. This paper aims to address three primary questions: ‘what is the current trend of methodological approach for applying LCEA in residential buildings?’; ‘what are the key parameters causing variations in LCEA results?’; and ‘how can the continued variations in the application of LCEA in residential buildings be overcome?’. To this end, 40 LCEA studies representing 157 cases of residential buildings across 16 countries have been critically reviewed. The findings reveal four principal categories of parameters that potentially contribute to the varying results of LCEAs: system boundary definition, calculation methods, geographical context, and interpretation of results. This paper also proposes a conceptual framework to minimize variations in LCEA studies by standardizing the process of conducting LCEAs.

This research examines residential satisfaction in a large Public Rental Housing (PRH) program in the developing municipality of Chongqing, a city located in western China. Twenty-three critical factors were identified through intensive literature review and incorporated into a large-sample survey of eight residential estates of PRH in Chongqing. The survey data were analysed using factor analysis, one sample T-test, stepwise multiple regression analysis, and ANOVA. The results showed generally, the residents neither expressed satisfaction nor dissatisfaction with their current housing situation in the estates sampled. Five domains of residential satisfaction were identified ranging from dwelling features, dwelling facilities, public facilities, neighbourhood environment to housing policy. Factors in the domain of dwelling features, dwelling facilities and housing policies were found to make positive contribution to the residential satisfaction, while negative contributions were made by the factors in the domains of public facilities and neighbourhood environment. Three key determinants of overall residential satisfaction were identified using multiple regression, namely public facilities, neighbourhood environment and housing policies. In addition, the results revealed that age, education, family income, residence length and housing type have significant impact on residential satisfaction with PRH programs. Consequently, related policy interventions could be introduced to improve the residential satisfaction in public rental housing.

China has been the largest contributor to global carbon emissions since 2008, with its building and construction industry considered as one of the most significant sources. However, few studies have been conducted on analyzing the influencing factors of the carbon emissions following a life cycle perspective. This study aims to evaluate the carbon emissions of this industry from a life cycle perspective, including the extraction, manufacturing, construction and construction-related transportation, and building operation, using Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index. The key findings are: 1) the extraction and manufacturing of raw materials, and building operation are the two biggest contributors to the life cycle carbon emissions of the building and construction industry, accounting for 58% and 40% respectively; 2) the most effective strategies to reduce carbon emissions in the construction stage from 2000 to 2015 are to improve energy efficiency and lower emission factor; and 3) the most effective strategies to reduce carbon emissions in the building operation stage from 2000 to 2015 are to increase development density, improve emission factor, energy structure and industry structure. This study provides useful scientific evidence for policy makers to establish appropriate emission targets and relevant reduction strategies that are relevant to China's building and construction industry.

As new renewable energy applications, building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV) systems have significant potential to facilitate energy transitions towards renewable energy in highly urbanized countries, where large areas of land for developing large-scale solar or wind farms are limited. Government policy plays a significant role in nurturing and protecting energy innovations at the early development stage, such as BIPV. However, various actors could have divergent views on the policies for energy innovations, and policymakers need to consider these views in policymaking to avoid potential failures in policy implementation. By taking BIPV as an example, this study aims to reveal stakeholders' different perspectives on the required innovation policies for new energy technologies based on Q methodology. The results indicate even though stakeholders share similar views on some aspects of BIPV policies, four significantly distinct policy perspectives on BIPV exist in stakeholders' mindsets, including supervisory support, intensively investigate, cautiously stimulate and proactively promote. These policy perspectives require significantly different approaches to promote BIPV, which indicates the complexity in formulating one set of policy mix catering for the various mindsets of stakeholders. This study has both theoretical contributions to innovation policy mix for energy transitions, and policy implications for promoting energy innovations, especially BIPV worldwide.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify the interactions of factors impacting the widespread adoption of prefabricated building technologies and the intervention strategies to facilitate the development of prefabrication based on fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs). Design/methodology/approach Through in-depth interviews with six stakeholder groups, namely, the government, developers, designers, contractors, manufacturers and researchers, 13 critical factors were identified and used to construct stakeholder-grouped FCMs, which were further aggregated into a collective FCM. The complexity and density of the collective FCM and the centrality of factors in the FCM were examined. Subsequently, a series of “what-if” simulations of the collective FCM were conducted to analyze the effectiveness of different interventions in promoting prefabrication. Findings The results show that three factors including market demand, cost, and policies and regulations have been mentioned by all stakeholder groups. However, these factors were ranked differently by stakeholder groups, implying that different stakeholder groups perceive the barriers to prefabricated building technologies differently. FCM simulations show that strengthening policies and regulations yield the strongest overall effect stimulating prefabrication, alleviating the organizational and environmental barriers more than the technological barriers, while improving the knowledge and expertise alleviate the technological barriers more. These measures need to be accompanied by other approaches, such as reducing cost and improving quality. Research limitations/implications It is a tough task to promote prefabrication as it is affected by numerous barriers with complex interactions, which have been overlooked by previous studies. This study clearly shows which strategy could tackle which barriers to prefabrication through the FCM simulations. This provides valuable references for the enterprises’ decision making and the governments’ policy making to facilitate the diffusion of prefabricated building technologies. Originality/value Few studies aim to analyze the interactions among the barriers to prefabrication, while this study specifically investigates this issue by illustrating the complex interactions using FCMs. Few studies also aim to identify the intervention strategies promoting prefabrication based on a quantitative approach, while this study employs FCM simulations to directly simulate the effectiveness of different strategies to facilitate prefabrication in a quantitative manner.

As a highly urbanised city-state with limited rooftop space but large facade areas of skyscrapers, Singapore is particularly suitable for the implementation of building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). This study aims to identify relevant barriers that still hinder the greater adoption of BIPV perceived by stakeholders in Singapore, as well as the drivers for BIPV that would lead building sector to adopt BIPV technologies. The study involved five important groups of stakeholders i.e. governmental authorities, building developers, architects, engineers, and PV/BIPV manufacturers to participate in a questionnaire survey. The results identified that on-site generation of clean energy bundled with economic benefits, Green Mark certification, and avoidance of CO2 emissions are the most influential drivers, while long-term payback period, high upfront cost, and low energy conversion efficiency are the three most substantial barriers to BIPV. Furthermore, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to examine whether the various stakeholder groups perceive the drivers and barriers differently. It was discovered that various stakeholder groups perceive the drivers similarly, but the significantly different opinions have been perceived on several barriers. This study provides suggestions to overcome barriers to BIPV not only in Singapore, but also other countries that aim to promote BIPV technologies.

Individuals usually present highly stable differences in household energy conservation intentions. Personality traits are a possible explanation for such differences. However, the mechanism through which personality traits affect household energy conservation intentions is still unclear. This research aims to explore the roles of personality traits in household energy conservation intentions by connecting the Big Five personality traits with household energy conservation intention through the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). The study employs data from a survey in Xi'an, China, with a valid sample size of 279 households. The analysis results indicate that, except for Extraversion, the other four personality traits affect household energy conservation intentions through different mechanisms. Agreeableness and Openness show positive correlations with all three TPB predictors. Conscientiousness also presents a positive correlation with perceived behavioral control, while Neuroticism only presents a negative relationship with attitude. This study combines personality traits with TPB to investigate household energy conservation intentions. The results provide a shred of empirical evidence on the relationships between personality traits and pro-environmental behaviors in northwest China. The findings of this study would contribute to eco-friendly policy-making for sustainable community development.

The building sector has high environmental impacts such as significant energy consumption and waste generation, which demands the development of tools to assess and reduce the impacts. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) enables the quantification of the environmental impacts but also faces difficulties of detailed information acquisition. The application of Building Information Modeling (BIM) offers the possibility to simplify and optimize the LCA process on account of the abundant data stored in the 3D building model. Therefore, the BIM-LCA integration has a high potential. This paper aims to propose a holistic workflow framework of BIM and LCA based on the qualitative content analysis. The framework links four steps of the traditional LCA process, namely Goal and Scope, Life Cycle Inventory, Life Cycle Impact Assessment and Interpretations, with three components of the BIM process, namely Pre- BIM, Modelling and Collaborations, and Results Collection and Visualization, to streamline the BIM-LCA integration. Challenges and future research directions within the integration process are explored as well in this research.

As a market-based, cost-effective, and international compatible mechanism, Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) has emerged as an increasingly popular and important policy tool to control and mitigate carbon emissions. It has been applied in many energy-intensive industries such as electric, power, and steel industry. However, it appears that carbon trading practice finds limited application in building sector. This study presents an identification and analysis on the fundamental reasons hindering the public buildings’ intention to participate in Emission Trading System by utilizing the binary logit model based on the theory planned behavior. Research data are collected through questionnaire survey in Guangdong Province which is the first carbon trading pilot which extends its coverage to building sector. As a result, five causes have been identified, and discussions on their importance order have been conducted. The findings provide essential information to relevant decision-makers for identifying the focal areas and taking due actions to further promote the effective operation of ETS in China.

Quality control is essential to a successful modular construction project and should be enhanced throughout the project from design to construction and installation. The current methods for analyzing the assembly quality of a removable floodwall heavily rely on manual inspection and contact-type measurements, which are time-consuming and costly. This study presents a systematic and practical approach to improve quality control of the prefabricated modular construction projects by integrating building information modeling (BIM) with three-dimensional (3D) laser scanning technology. The study starts with a thorough literature review of current quality control methods in modular construction. Firstly, the critical quality control procedure for the modular construction structure and components should be identified. Secondly, the dimensions of the structure and components in a BIM model is considered as quality tolerance control benchmarking. Thirdly, the point cloud data is captured with 3D laser scanning, which is used to create the as-built model for the constructed structure. Fourthly, data analysis and field validation are carried out by matching the point cloud data with the as-built model and the BIM model. Finally, the study employs the data of a removable floodwall project to validate the level of technical feasibility and accuracy of the presented methods. This method improved the efficiency and accuracy of modular construction quality control. It established a preliminary foundation for using BIM and laser scanning to conduct quality control in removable floodwall installation. The results indicated that the proposed integration of BIM and 3D laser scanning has great potential to improve the quality control of a modular construction project.

In the past decade, the architecture, engineering, and construction industry has witnessed increasing growth in the green building market and continues to expect a promising future. Althoug...

Environmental concerns and growing energy costs raise the importance of sustainable development and energy conservation. The building sector accounts for a significant portion of total energy consumption. Passive cooling techniques provide a promising and cost-efficient solution to reducing the energy demand of buildings. Based on a typical residential case in Hong Kong, this study aims to analyze the integration of various passive cooling techniques on annual and hourly building energy demand with whole building simulation. The results indicate that infiltration and insulation improvement are effective in regard to energy conservation in buildings, while the effectiveness of variations in building orientation, increasing natural ventilation rate, and phase change materials (PCM) are less significant. The findings will be helpful in the passive house standard development in Hong Kong and contribute to the further optimization work to realize both energy efficiency and favorably built environments in residential buildings.

Building information modeling (BIM) is deemed a useful innovation for technological and sustainable development of the economy. It is partially used in building projects in Singapore, although its implementation is mandated by the local government, resulting in various wastes and suboptimal productivity. Little is known about how non-value adding (NVA) BIM implementation practices were perceived by the local practitioners and how these practices affected productivity in building projects in Singapore. This study aimed to identify critical NVA BIM implementation activities and investigate the criticality of their resulting wastes to productivity performance in the current project delivery process in Singapore. The results from a questionnaire survey of 73 experts and four post-survey interviews in Singapore revealed that 38 NVA BIM implementation activities were deemed critical, among which &ldquo, lack of involvement by contractors to contribute site knowledge&rdquo, in the design development phase was ranked top, the top five resulting wastes with highest criticalities were reworks/abortive works, requests for information, design deficiencies, defects, and waiting/idle time. Furthermore, an independent-samples t-test was conducted to examine whether construction firms and upfront stakeholders perceived the NVA activities differently. It was discovered that most NVA activities exerted more agreement from construction firms than upfront non-construction organizations. Six strategies were proposed to mitigate the NVA activities and wastes. The findings can help practitioners identify weak areas of their BIM implementation practices and prioritize resources accordingly to eliminate the wastes and foster sustainability, as well as help overseas project teams, with minor adjustments, customize their own NVA BIM implementation activities and management strategies.

Rapid urbanization and the issue of environmental degradation compel developing countries to find a cleaner approach to replace or complement the traditional on-site construction method. Off-site construction (OSC) with its various advantages has been regarded as a promising approach to address the problems confronted in developing countries. However, promoting the adoption of OSC is indeed a tough task that still faces multiple barriers. It is stakeholder collaboration by integrating diverse resources within the construction industry that can potentially address these barriers. Although multiple studies have been conducted from various perspectives, the issue of stakeholder collaboration, as the key to promoting OSC adoption, has been overlooked. This research aims to explore stakeholders’ influencing power over such barriers using two-mode social network analysis. Firstly, 13 barriers to the OSC adoption, as well as 15 stakeholders with the power to overcome these barriers, were identified based on literature and expert judgments. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was conducted comprising 39 responses from experts with rich experience in OSC in Chongqing, China. Centrality and core-periphery structure analyses were adopted to study the network. The results show that the government and developers have the highest degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality, and thus are the most influential stakeholders in the network. Similarly, the lack of knowledge and expertise, and the dominant conventional project process have the highest values of centrality among all barriers. With the density of interaction being 0.814, core stakeholders and barriers have intensive relationships, and the network shows an apparent core-periphery structure. Theoretically, this study demonstrates the use of the two-mode social network in construction research, and practically, this study sheds lights on how to effectively drive the adoption of OSC in developing countries through promoting stakeholder collaboration.

Off-site construction (OSC) has been recognized as an approach to transform the construction sector from a labor–intensive to a modernized and green industry. Despite a number of advantages, the development of OSC still remains its infancy in China due to various interactive barriers. Some studies have been conducted to explore the barriers to the OSC adoption. However, very few studies attempted to investigate the complex interrelationships among these barriers. In order to fill this gap, this study adopts Interpretive Structural Model (ISM) technique to explore the interrelationships amongst barriers to the OSC adoption in China. Firstly, critical barriers were identified through literature review and semi-structured interviews with various stakeholders. Then, the overall structure amongst barriers was revealed through ISM technique. By using the Matriced’ Impacts Croise's Multiplication Appliquee a UN Classement (MICMAC) technique, the barriers were classified into four groups according to their driving-power and dependence power. The results indicate that specific attentions should be given to inadequate policy and regulations, lacking knowledge and expertise, dominated traditional project process as well as low standardization. The research findings provide valuable information for policy-makers on the overall structure amongst barriers. These results shed lights on effectively developing measures to facilitate the OSC adoption in the construction sector.

Solar Photovoltaics (PV) has become one of the major trends in the energy sector for the past decade. Due to the high upfront capital expenditure needed for solar installations, new investment models and financing options have emerged in recent years. While solar financing has received increasing attention, little research has been done to explore the use of crowdfunding for PV development. This study presents a review of the crowdfunding concepts in general and crowdfunding of renewable energy specifically, and provides a system dynamics model to simulate the development potential of Solar Crowdfunding (SCF) by taking Singapore as an example. The model simulated a three-stage SCF development including the determination of potential SCF adopters, factors affecting the adoption of SCF, and factors affecting the success of SCF. The results show that under different scenarios, SCF can potentially generate a cumulative amount of $177–278 million US Dollars by the end of 2050, accounting for 2.5–4% of the total cumulative funds needed for PV installations expected in the year 2050 in Singapore. This study enriches the existing studies on solar financing and provides references for policy makers, academics and industry practitioners interested in SCF.

The building industry has experienced a widespread transition towards green buildings and consequently a growing need for green facilities professionals to maximize green building potential in terms of energy efficiency, water conservation and waste reduction in their operational stage. Green buildings have unique technological systems that require facility managers to have relevant knowledge and skills to conduct proper facilities management and maintenance planning to maximize the potential of green buildings. It is important, then, to investigate whether knowledge gaps for facility managers exist with respect to green buildings, and if so, how these knowledge gaps could be bridged. Though several studies have investigated the operation and maintenance processes of green buildings, few studies considered facility managers' knowledge and skills regarding green facility management (GFM). Set in the context of Singapore, this study aims to holistically investigate the knowledge and skills of managing green buildings in the community of facility managers, including their perceived differences between green and conventional buildings, the difficulty of GFM, the knowledge gaps of GFM and the underlying reasons, as well as how the gaps could be bridged. A total of 90 survey responses were collected and eight interviews with key stakeholders were conducted, which indicate facility managers believe green buildings do have special features that require unique knowledge and skills, and currently knowledge gaps do exist hindering the transition towards GFM. Therefore, this paper derives plausible solutions to bridge the knowledge gaps, such as establishing holistic subsidies for those facility managers participating in training programs of GFM. This study provides references for researchers and relevant governmental departments to better understand industry professionals' knowledge gaps in the transitioning process towards a green built environment, and to make better policy decisions bridging the knowledge gaps and thereby facilitating the green transition process.

Construction industries have significant impacts on the economy, society and environment. To transform construction industry towards sustainability, construction enterprises' perceptions and performance on sustainability needs to be understood and evaluated, which has not be fully explored by existing studies. This paper holistically examines the Chinese construction enterprises’ attitude towards and performance on various aspects of sustainability (e.g. the economic, social and environmental aspects) in order to identify those aspects the firms perceive to be the most and least important and those aspects the firms perform best and worst on. The associations among the sustainability attitude, sustainability performance, and firm size are also explored. The findings show that quality management and customer service are perceived as the most important as well as the best-performed aspects by the firms while supporting community development is the least important and worst-performed aspect. Sustainability attitude is positively correlated with performance, and larger firms tend to have better sustainability performance than that of small ones. However, larger construction firms do not necessarily perceive sustainability more important. This study provides a useful reference for policy makers and researchers to understand how sustainability is perceived and implemented by the Chinese construction firms.

The building industry is a major contributor to various grand challenges e.g. climate change. Green buildings have been regarded by many as the solutions and opportunities to improve the environmental sustainability of the built environment. However, the development of green buildings in many countries is very slow, facing tremendous barriers technologically, culturally, economically and institutionally. How to understand and eliminate these barriers thereby effectively accelerating the development of green buildings presents a significant challenge for both researchers and practitioners. This paper aims to enrich the current efforts in promoting green buildings by proposing conceptual frameworks from a socio-technical transition perspective. The conceptual frameworks provide guidelines for analysing (1) factors affecting the socio-technical transition towards green buildings; (2) the transition phases towards green buildings; and (3) the actions of systemic changes to promote green buildings. The frameworks holistically demonstrate the complexity, struggles and potential strategies to effectively promote green buildings, which could offer references for policymakers, researchers and practitioners involved in green building development.

Artificial neural networks (ANN) exhibit excellent performance in complex problems and have been increasingly applied in the research field of construction management (CM) over the last few decades. However, few papers draw up a systematic review to evaluate the state-of-the-art research on ANN in CM. In this paper, content analysis is performed to comprehensively analyze 112 related bibliographic records retrieved from seven selected top journals published between 2000 and 2020. The results indicate that the applications of ANN of interest in CM research have been significantly increasing since 2015. Back-propagation was the most widely used algorithm in training ANN. Integrated ANN with fuzzy logic/genetic algorithm was the most commonly employed way of addressing the CM problem. In addition, 11 application fields and 31 research topics were identified, with the primary research interests focusing on cost, performance, and safety. Lastly, challenges and future directions for ANN in CM were put forward from four main areas of input data, modeling, application fields, and emerging technologies. This paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the application of ANN in CM research and useful reference for the future.

With the advantages of non-renewable energy conservation and environmental protection, solar energy technology has been widely used worldwide. Data shows that solar systems has been increasingly installed from 2006 to 2016 in Australia. However, impacting factors on Australian solar system installation remain unknown. Therefore, this paper provides a spatial regression analysis to identify the factors that influence households to install the solar panels. Solar installation maps of 2006, 2011, and 2016 are compared to investigate the changes and development of solar distribution. Besides, cluster maps are analyzed to investigate the cluster area distributions. Through analyzing statistical variables such as regression coefficient, p-value, z-value, and Moran’s I value, it can be concluded that educational qualification, population, and household composition have substantial positive relevancies to the installation of solar systems. It also shows that the low solar installation cluster areas mainly distribute at the center of Australia.

Overwhelmed plastic waste has been gradually appreciated as a global problematic issue. Scientific efforts either dedicated to comprehending its distribution and detrimental impacts on the environment or management measures to contain it. However, there is a concern asymmetry between the knowledge of detrimental impacts of plastic waste and corresponding mitigation measures. Microplastics in the marine ecosystem is the foremost research hotspot in terms of plastic waste's detrimental impacts. Recycling plastic waste is the utmost research topic in terms of plastic waste management. Plastic pollutants derived from plastic waste contaminates the environment and ultimately threatens human health. Current measures aimed at reducing the plastic waste ended in the environment via recycling, and emphasised its retention of material value via circular economy. However, these measures did not prioritise taking direct action to mitigate the threats to human health. This review aims to bridge these two research ends of plastic waste that provides a holistic view of this problematic issue. The keywords analysis function in VOSviewer is adopted in this study to map out the state-of-the-art of existing research in plastic waste. Four research mainstreams are highlighted: (1) Environmental concerns of plastic waste in aquatic ecosystems; (2) Potential threats to human health; (3) Plastic waste reduction options and recycling methods; (4) Plastic waste thermochemical treatment. Consequently, a future research agenda is proposed.