Towards sustainability in the Chinese construction industry: a transition approach

Abstract

Despite the massive scale of the Chinese construction industry, there is a lack of adequate awareness of sustainable development within this industry. This study aims to analyse the current status of, and the motivations for and barriers to, the sustainability transitions of Chinese construction enterprises. Firstly, as the policy environment could significantly influence sustainability transitions, this study holistically examined China’s policy landscape for facilitating the transition to sustainable construction. Regulation and control, economic incentives and supporting activities have been identified as the main policy instruments for facilitating sustainable construction in China. Two critical challenges of the policy system are revealed, namely, a lack of consideration of the economic and social dimensions of sustainable construction, and the ineffectiveness of some policies. This study then examined the transition processes towards sustainability in three leading Chinese construction firms from 2009 to 2013. In total, 29 critical sustainability aspects and 92 sub-aspects of sustainability practices implemented by the case firms were identified. By comparing the implemented sustainability practices with the requirements of three sustainability guidelines, this study revealed that the three firms presented different strategic sustainability behaviours, and that practices towards environmental sustainability are weak compared with practices towards economic and social sustainability. Subsequently, to investigate how various construction firms in China, other than only the leading firms, perceive and perform in relation to sustainability, a questionnaire was developed based on the 29 sustainability aspects identified from the case study. The questionnaire survey results revealed that quality management and customer service are perceived by the firms as not only the most important but are also the best-performed aspects 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 smaller firms. However, larger firms do not necessarily believe sustainability is more important than is the case among smaller firms. Based on k-means cluster analysis and importance–performance analysis, this study then classified the investigated firms into three groups according to their sustainability performance, namely, low-performing, medium-performing and high-performing firms, and identified the transition pathways from low-performing to high-performing firms. Last but not least, after discovering the transition pathways, this study investigated the various factors driving and prohibiting these transitions, based on an integrated conceptual framework built on the multi-level perspective and triple embeddedness framework of sustainability transitions. The results show that for low-performing firms, the key stimulus for sustainability comes from external socio-political pressures, while economic and industry issues, for example, inadequate incentives present the biggest hindrance. Even though medium-performing firms also regard external socio-political pressures as key drivers, they start to recognize the benefits brought by sustainability, for example, improved corporate image as key drivers. Although high-performing firms clearly acknowledge the economic benefits of sustainability, they still experience complex barriers to sustainability, for example, the inconsistency of policies and the culture of conservatism. Thus, this study shows that China has a long way to go to facilitate sustainable practices in the construction industry.