Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach

Green building construction is essential to meet severe environmental challenges and achieve sustainability, where designers’ practices are crucial to improve the green performance of construction projects. However, multi-level motivations in green design, such as institutional, market, organization...

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Main Authors: Li, Qing, Zhang, Lianying, Zhang, Limao, Jha, Sunil
Other Authors: School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: 2022
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Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154724
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Institution: Nanyang Technological University
Language: English
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spelling sg-ntu-dr.10356-1547242022-01-05T06:35:10Z Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach Li, Qing Zhang, Lianying Zhang, Limao Jha, Sunil School of Civil and Environmental Engineering Engineering::Civil engineering Green Design Practices Multi-Level Motivations Green building construction is essential to meet severe environmental challenges and achieve sustainability, where designers’ practices are crucial to improve the green performance of construction projects. However, multi-level motivations in green design, such as institutional, market, organizational, and individual initiatives, have not been explored in detail. The dynamic interactions of multiple motivations are rarely examined. The present research reports a systematic and dynamic perspective and investigates how multi-level motivations and their interactions act on designers’ green practices. Multi-level motivations towards green design practices are firstly identified through literature analyses and expert interviews. A system dynamics model characterizing the causal structure of a design assessment system is next developed. It involves interrelationships among the organizational, individual, market, and institutional components influencing designers’ green practices. After model validation to ensure credible output, model simulation is conducted to predict behavioral patterns of the model. Monte Carlo simulation is further used to assess the robustness of the model and understand the effects of changes in input parameters on output. The results show that multi-level motivations interact dynamically and have intricate influences on designers’ green practices. The findings indicate the significant role of government policy in encouraging green practices. It is noted that more policy stimuli may not bring more cost-efficient green outcomes. Besides, the development trends of designers’ green practices are relatively consistent with that of green techniques instead of owners’ requirements. This study suggests that the dynamic interactions of multi-level motivations and intricate effects of motivations are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of complex green design practices. Furthermore, a combination of policy considering hybrid effects turns out to be more effective to reinforce green design practices. A 10% synchronous improvement in green policy implementation, organizational strategy, and designers’ ability could enhance designers’ green practices by 40% compared with the base run. The present research contributes to (a) the state of knowledge by offering a systematic and dynamic view to accurately build the dynamic dependent structure of multiple green motivations and enable the thorough assessment of green design and (b) the state of practice by providing guidelines of joint efforts and systems thinking for sustainable development under complex and dynamic conditions. This research is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71572126, No. 71872126) and the China Scholarship Council Project (No. 201906250048). 2022-01-05T06:35:09Z 2022-01-05T06:35:09Z 2021 Journal Article Li, Q., Zhang, L., Zhang, L. & Jha, S. (2021). Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach. Sustainable Cities and Society, 64, 102490-. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2020.102490 2210-6707 https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154724 10.1016/j.scs.2020.102490 2-s2.0-85091794873 64 102490 en Sustainable Cities and Society © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
institution Nanyang Technological University
building NTU Library
continent Asia
country Singapore
Singapore
content_provider NTU Library
collection DR-NTU
language English
topic Engineering::Civil engineering
Green Design Practices
Multi-Level Motivations
spellingShingle Engineering::Civil engineering
Green Design Practices
Multi-Level Motivations
Li, Qing
Zhang, Lianying
Zhang, Limao
Jha, Sunil
Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
description Green building construction is essential to meet severe environmental challenges and achieve sustainability, where designers’ practices are crucial to improve the green performance of construction projects. However, multi-level motivations in green design, such as institutional, market, organizational, and individual initiatives, have not been explored in detail. The dynamic interactions of multiple motivations are rarely examined. The present research reports a systematic and dynamic perspective and investigates how multi-level motivations and their interactions act on designers’ green practices. Multi-level motivations towards green design practices are firstly identified through literature analyses and expert interviews. A system dynamics model characterizing the causal structure of a design assessment system is next developed. It involves interrelationships among the organizational, individual, market, and institutional components influencing designers’ green practices. After model validation to ensure credible output, model simulation is conducted to predict behavioral patterns of the model. Monte Carlo simulation is further used to assess the robustness of the model and understand the effects of changes in input parameters on output. The results show that multi-level motivations interact dynamically and have intricate influences on designers’ green practices. The findings indicate the significant role of government policy in encouraging green practices. It is noted that more policy stimuli may not bring more cost-efficient green outcomes. Besides, the development trends of designers’ green practices are relatively consistent with that of green techniques instead of owners’ requirements. This study suggests that the dynamic interactions of multi-level motivations and intricate effects of motivations are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of complex green design practices. Furthermore, a combination of policy considering hybrid effects turns out to be more effective to reinforce green design practices. A 10% synchronous improvement in green policy implementation, organizational strategy, and designers’ ability could enhance designers’ green practices by 40% compared with the base run. The present research contributes to (a) the state of knowledge by offering a systematic and dynamic view to accurately build the dynamic dependent structure of multiple green motivations and enable the thorough assessment of green design and (b) the state of practice by providing guidelines of joint efforts and systems thinking for sustainable development under complex and dynamic conditions.
author2 School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
author_facet School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Li, Qing
Zhang, Lianying
Zhang, Limao
Jha, Sunil
format Article
author Li, Qing
Zhang, Lianying
Zhang, Limao
Jha, Sunil
author_sort Li, Qing
title Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
title_short Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
title_full Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
title_fullStr Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
title_full_unstemmed Exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
title_sort exploring multi-level motivations towards green design practices : a system dynamics approach
publishDate 2022
url https://hdl.handle.net/10356/154724
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