Evolutionary process of promoting green building technologies adoption in China: A perspective of government

As an effective measure to reduce energy and material consumption, green building technology (GBT) has drawn much attention in China. Although previous studies reveal that government policies can affect GBT adoption through qualitative analysis, it is still unclear how policies take effect and to what extent they can influence GBT adoption. To fill this gap, this study analyzes the quantitative impact of GBT policies through evolutionary game theory. Governments and construction stakeholders are selected as game players. An evolutionary game model with a subsidy is established to determine how government policies affect GBT adoption under the positive incentive. Furthermore, another model with mandatory regulation is built to investigate the multiple effects of the policies. The results show that there are only two stable strategies at the end of the evolutionary process. One is that governments choose to promote GBTs and construction stakeholders choose to adopt GBTs; the other one is that both of them take no action on GBT adoption. Government subsidies are essential for promoting GBT, while punishment measures cannot change the final state and can only urge more participants to implement positive strategies. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to verify the model’s results and prove that the initial strategies and different parameters can influence the final strategies under a specific situation. This study enhances the body of knowledge by putting forward a novel framework for GBT policy analysis based on evolutionary game theory. It also provides insights into making policies for governments and gives advice to construction stakeholders on maintaining market competitiveness.