The Study On The Influential Factors Of Design Units' Willingness To Construction Waste Minimization

With the rapid development of urbanization and industrialization,a lot of new construction,renovation,expansion and demolition activities have generated a large amount of construction and demolition waste.What's more,large quantity of the construction waste generated not only consumes lots of raw materials,resulting in economic losses,but also causes several environmental problems,such as running up huge amounts of land spaces for waste landfills,energy consumption,dust and gas emission,noise pollution,water pollution and so on.Therefore,in order to relieve the environmental pressure and resource consumption caused by construction waste,waste minimization has been paid more and more attention.Construction industry is a kind of labour-intensive industry,which determines that the behaviour and willingness of project participants has a direct or indirect influence on the generation of construction waste.Meanwhile,through reviewing the relevant literatures,it was found that the researches about construction waste minimization are mainly focused on technology,management strategies and policy,while less on the willingness of project participants.In addition,implementing waste minimization measures at design stage is commonly regarded as the most effective way,as it could reduce construction waste at the source,and design units play a dominant role at the design process,so the willingness of design units to waste minimisation is crucial to reduce the generation of construction waste.Therefore,it is necessary to study the willingness of design units to construction waste minimization.From the perspective of design units,this article identified the main factors influencing design units' willingness to construction waste minimization,and explored the mechanism of each factor and their interrelationships through empirical analysis,in order to put forward some feasible suggestions on how to promote design units to implement waste minimization.The research process and results are listed as follows:(1)Through literature review at home and abroad,this paper reviewed the limitations of existing researches and proposed the contents and objectives of this study.And then,the major factors that affecting the willingness of design units to construction waste minimization were identified.According to the factor analysis and assumptions,the method of structural equation model was used to develop a theoretical model of factors of design units' willingness to waste minimization.(2)Using for reference of the related research items,the measurement scales of willingness to reduce construction waste and the main influencing factors were compiled respectively.And,the reliability and validity of the scales were tested by reliability analysis and confirmatory factor analysis respectively.The results showed that the scales have high reliability and validity.(3)The path analysis was applied to verify the relationship among latent variables.Results have shown that: designers' attention toward reduction,social and market environment,government supervision and project constraints have significant positive influence on design units' willingness to construction waste minimization.In comparison,social and market environment has the greatest impact,followed by designers' attention toward reduction and government supervision,and the impact of project constraints is less important.Meanwhile,enterprise culture has no significant impact on the willingness to waste minimization,but it can affect indirectly by influencing designers' attention toward reduction.In addition,social and market environment has certain influence on enterprise culture and designers' attention toward reduction;government supervision also has significant positive influence on social and market environment.(4)According to the analysis of direct effect,indirect effect and total effect,the key factor and critical path affecting the willingness of design units to reduce construction waste were explored.It found that,social and market environment has the greatest total effect on design units' willingness to waste minimization;the path of “social and market environment---> designers' attention toward reduction---> design units' willingness to waste minimization” is the most important way to effect design units' willingness to waste minimization;while the total effect of government supervision came second.(5)Taking into account the stakeholders in construction waste management,a few of suggestions on how to promote design units to implement waste minimization were proposed from the perspectives of society,government,owners and design units.