Contractors’ carbon reduction behaviour: UK construction professionals’ perspective
Abstract
Purpose
The decisions of contractors could impact the reduction of construction carbon footprint. These decisions are linked to the belief of contractors which equally affects how they behave while delivering projects. This study aims to investigate the behavioural tendencies of contractors that could lead to carbon minimisation during the execution of construction projects.
Design/methodology/approach
An industry survey was performed amongst 41 UK construction professionals. Spearman’s correlation and factor analysis were used to analyse the data.
Findings
The result of the Spearman’s correlation gave rise to 14 contractors’ carbon reduction behaviour (CCRB) variables and their factor analysis yielded two distinct factors, namely, contractors’ consummate carbon reduction behaviour and contractors’ pragmatic carbon reduction behaviour. The findings suggest that in the UK, contractors are willing to take voluntary practical steps to decrease the carbon footprint of construction projects.
Practical implications
This finding might be unexpected to construction stakeholders, especially construction clients who may believe that infusing strict carbon reduction obligations in contracts is sufficient in nudging contractors to lessen the carbon impact of projects.
Originality/value
The study attempted to quantitatively derive CCRB, thereby extending the breadth of knowledge in the construction carbon reduction domain.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Disclosure statement: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
This study forms part of a much larger doctoral research on carbon reduction in construction projects. The authors wish to acknowledge the School of Built Environment, Engineering and Computing, Leeds Beckett University and YORhub for their partial funding support for this study. Also, the authors thank the reviewers and editors for their kind contributions to improving the quality of this article.
Citation
Arogundade, S., Dulaimi, M., Ajayi, S. and Saad, A. (2024), "Contractors’ carbon reduction behaviour: UK construction professionals’ perspective", Construction Innovation, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/CI-08-2023-0192
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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