An exploratory analysis of low-carbon transitions in China's construction industry based on multi-level perspective

Climate change caused by carbon emissions is a concern for many countries. As the world's largest carbon emitter, China's construction industry generates substantial carbon emissions. However, previous research has primarily focused on promoting low-carbon building products or calculating carbon emissions to propose low-carbon transition measures. There has been limited research on low-carbon transitions in the construction industry from an industry system perspective. This study aimed to identify the driving factors and their interrelationships for low-carbon transitions in the construction industry. A multi-level perspective (MLP) was presented as a heuristic structure to analyze driving factors. An integrated interpretative structural model (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) technique was adopted to explore the interactions among factors. The results demonstrate that a six-level hierarchy of 22 drivers was constructed, and relationship degrees between the factors were discovered. The strongest drivers were low-carbon legal regulation, followed by industrial structure and organizational characteristics connected to industrial development. Improving these fundamental factors will increase the probability of successful transitions. The results also demonstrate that transitions are a collaborative process that involves multiple stakeholders. These findings can provide suggestions for low-carbon practices in the construction industry.