Assessing Green-Building Policies with Structural Consistency and Behavioral Coherence: A Framework of Effectiveness and Efficiency

Abstract

Getting a better understanding of the policy effectiveness and efficiency is a promising topic for encouraging the green-building initiative in the architecture, engineering, and construction industry. This study introduces a framework for assessing and improving the green-building policies concerning the effectiveness with “structural consistency” of policy instruments and the efficiency with “behavioral coherence” of interagency collaborative networks and examined it with China’s green-building policies from 2002 to 2019. This framework, using content mining and social network analysis, not merely provides a comprehensive approach for assessing policy performance of green-building initiative, but also contributes to integrating, comparing, and benchmarking the sustainability-transition studies from various industries and countries. The empirical evidence from China brings novel understandings to the policy-makers of emerging markets for the structural deficiencies in information services, international collaboration, and tax incentives, the three-stage roadmap of the green-building initiative, and the importance of policy agenda. This study contributes not only to the green-building literature by offering a systematic and referential framework for assessing policy performance but also to the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) community by guiding the improvement of green-building policies in emerging markets.