A successful delivery process of green buildings: The project owners’ view, motivation and commitment

Renewable Energy 138 (2019) 651e658

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Renewable Energy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/renene

A successful delivery process of green buildings: The project owners’ view, motivation and commitment Jingxiao Zhang a, *, Hui Li b, Ayokunle Olubunmi Olanipekun c, Li Bai d a

School of Economics and Management, Chang’an University, Middle Section of Nanerhuan Road, Yanta District, Xi’an, 710064, PR China School of Civil Engineering, Chang’an University, NO.161, Chang’an Road, Yanta District, Xi’an, 710061, PR China c Quantity Surveying Department, Federal University of Technology, Akure, Nigeria d School of Economics and Management, Baoji University of Arts and Sciences, Baoji, PR China b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history: Received 12 June 2018 Received in revised form 4 January 2019 Accepted 1 February 2019 Available online 5 February 2019

The project owners are at the centre of sustainability decisions to drive the implementation of sustainable building features in the construction industry. Despite this, the existing studies on the successful delivery of green buildings have only focused on the views of other construction project participants such as Architects and Contractors, while project owners are left out. To fill this gap, this study developed a conceptual framework of the synergy between owners’ motivation and commitment towards successful delivery of green buildings. The framework was empirically tested by exploring the views of 10 purposively selected project owners in the Australian construction industry. The findings revealed that while project owners’ motivation increases their commitment towards successful delivery of green building projects, the intrinsic type of project owners’ motivation is more effective than the extrinsic type. The extrinsic type of motivation is less effective due to the lack of harmonization in the existing incentive policies and programs for driving green building development in the Australian construction industry. The study concluded that, similar to other construction project participants, project owners have specific roles in the area of sustainability performance towards the successful delivery of green building projects. By implication, this study tinkers the Australian government to revisit the policy landscape for enhancing green building practices. Additionally, this study has demonstrated the need for active participation of project owners in the delivery of green building projects, and shown how the active participation of project owners can be enhanced through motivation in the construction industry. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Conceptual framework Construction industry Green building Project delivery Project owners Sustainability

1. Introduction The persistent high rate of global resource consumption in such forms as excessive energy, water and forest use and raw materials has given rise to the concept of sustainable development [1]. Famously expressed in the Brundtland report, sustainable development emphasises on meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs [2]. In the building sector, sustainable development is expressed in the form of green building [3,4]. Green building emphasises on the physical development that employs sustainable construction, whereby built or constructed products are built using best-practice,

* Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Zhang), [email protected] (H. Li), [email protected], [email protected] (A.O. Olanipekun), [email protected] (L. Bai). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2019.02.002 0960-1481/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

clean and resource-efficient means from the exploitation of raw materials to the demolition and disposal of their residues [5,6]. As a result, green buildings are environmentally, socially and economically sustainable. Environmentally, green buildings impacts the environment and ecosystem very minimally [7], while socially, the occupation of green buildings increase users’ satisfaction, health and comfort [8]. Economically, the economic benefits such as high demand, financial profits accrue from the development and marketing of green buildings [7]. However, the process of the delivery of green buildings is very complex. In comparison to the delivery of conventional buildings, green buildings require more process requirements such as additional site precautions, energy efficiency modelling, designing iterations and sophisticated simulations in order to achieve sustainability objectives [9]. Additionally, increased number of multi-discipline project participants, mostly with enhanced competencies are required to interact and take decisions together in a

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less sequential and connected manner [10]. Furthermore, sophisticated sustainable building materials and facilities such as Chilled beams need to be installed in an integrative manner and holistically optimise them into the green building system [10,11]. Owing to the difficult delivery, green buildings experience less successful project delivery. For example, to install sustainable building features such as Photovoltaics increases the cost incurred in the green building project delivery [12], while the synthesis of the process workflow of those actors involved in the green building project delivery increases the completion time [13]. To overcome the difficult delivery and ensure success in the delivery of green buildings has often involved the implementation of different success factors by participant construction professionals such as designers, project managers, contractors and quantity surveyors. For instance, integration in the project delivery process enables the project participants to interact seamlessly to achieve better sustainability outcomes [14,15]. Greater communication among project participants, particularly through multiple communication means contribute to success in the delivery of green buildings [15,16]. Additionally, the use of ICT platforms such as the 2D and 3D modelling platforms helps designers and engineers to render a more effective and efficient design, visualisation and process modelling services during the green building project delivery [17,18]. While the role of construction professional participants are very important to overcome the complexities in the delivery of green buildings, project owners are often not considered. Project owners are very important construction participants in the construction industry. They are at the centre of the success of sustainability decisions [19], and they drive the implementation of sustainable building features in the construction industry [20]. Therefore, the lack of consideration for project owners denies the important role they can play to drive sustainability practices, especially in terms of contributing to ensure success in the delivery of greens. This study aims to fill this gap. Firstly, this study will develop the conceptual framework of the synergy between owners’ motivation and commitment for the delivery of greens. Secondly, the conceptual framework will be empirically tested by exploring the views of project owners in the construction industry. In terms of practical contributions, this study establishes the sustainability-role for project owners during green building project delivery. Additionally, it tinkers the government to revisit the policy landscape for enhancing green building practices in Australia and elsewhere. Finally, this study has demonstrated the need for active participation of project owners in the delivery of green building projects, and shown how the active participation of project owners can be enhanced through motivation in the construction industry. Theoretically, the conceptual framework provides a basis for academic researchers to advance project owners’ roles and contributions to sustainability practices in the construction industry. 2. Literature review 2.1. Factors for successful green building project delivery As summarised in Table 1, there are many factors for the ensuring success in the delivery of green buildings. One is integration in the delivery of green buildings. It emphasises on the interdisciplinary interaction of project participants [14] to ensure increased sustainability results [15]. Particularly at the very early stage in the project delivery, integration of project participants is very key to ensure early understanding of project requirements for planning purpose [21]. Greater communication is another success factor that ensures limited conflicting stance of project participants towards ensuring success in green building project delivery [15].

Table 1 Summary of the factors for successful green building project delivery. References

Success factors 1

Ahn et al. [34] Gultekin et al. [31] Hellmund et al. [23] Horman et al. [18] Hwang and Ng [16] Isa et al. [21] Koranda et al. [37] Li et al. [28] Love et al. [38] Magent et al. [26] Korkmaz et al. [10] Mills [33] Mollaoglu-Korkmaz et al. [14] Pheng Low et al. [24] Swarup et al. [15] Weerasinghe et al. [32] Wong and Fan [22] Wu and Low [25] Zhang et al. [29] Zuo et al. [39]

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

x x x x x x

x

x

x x x x x x x x x

x x x

x x

x x x

1-integration; 2-communication; 3-BIM; 4-project management; 5-ICT; 6-process techniques; 7-specialised technologies; 8-rating systems; 9-building commissioning; 10-professional knowledge and expertise; 11-building codes.

Hwang and Ng [16] stated that this factor is critical; to accentuate the integration of project participants, by multiple avenues of communication such as e-mail, fax, and mobile communication [15]. Seemingly connected to the factor of greater communication is the employment of building information modelling (BIM). According to Wong and Fan [22], BIM eliminates the numerous gaps for communication breaches when project participants exchange information, and the opportunity for production of irrelevant as a means of checking for errors. In this context, BIM eliminates the costly human errors of data input [23], in addition to improving communication, while additional time can be invested on enhancing design and fast tracking the construction [22]. Effective project management is an encompassing success factor that emphasises on monitoring of projects, giving feedbacks, as well as effective schedule, cost, quality and change managements of green building project delivery [24]. According to Wu and Low [25], this factor should cover the life cycle of greens to be more effective. The use of information communication technology (ICT) based applications such as process models enable project participants to visualise the project delivery process [17]. As a result, they are able to evaluate critically the designing of green buildings so as to take decisions to reduce waste generation and enhance design quality [26]. Additionally, with BIM, project participants can designoptimise proposed green buildings and select the more appropriate building orientation and the degree of massing [22]. Equally, the implementation of process-based techniques such as lean construction during project delivery assist to deliver best performing green buildings [18]. For instance, when lean construction is integrated into the green building project delivery, it is referred to as lean and green, and the combination increases the valueaddition and waste-reduction in green building project delivery [18,27]. Additionally, to ensure that green buildings deliver its sustainability expectations requires the incorporation of innovative, advanced and specialised technologies in its system [28]. According to Zhang, Platten and Shen [29], such technologies help to increase the performance levels in green buildings, for instance to achieve carbon neutrality [30]. However, the incorporation of technological features in green buildings could be too expensive venture that

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limits its adoption in the construction industry. Sustainability rating systems enable the assessment and evaluation of the sustainability performance of buildings from planning to designing, constructing, and utilisation [25]. As a result, the implementation of sustainability rating system provides critical guidelines that project participants rely on to attain high performance buildings [31]. Equally, it helps project participants to maintain quality assurance and management in the delivery of green buildings [32]. The commissioning of a building commissioning agent to provide a holistic and forensic evaluation of building disposition and to reveal less than optimal situations and mis-functions helps to increase performance levels such as energy savings and indoor air quality in green buildings [33]. Furthermore, the project participants involved in green building project delivery process need to update their knowledge of, and expertise in the application green building strategies and functions, and take cognisance of the value of integration in the design process [34]. Such knowledge and expertise help them to deliver green buildings that incorporate the social, economic and environmental advantages [21]. Some features of green buildings such as high efficiency heating systems are seldomly included in existing building codes and regulations in many jurisdictions, and this often becomes issue of conflict during project delivery [35]. Therefore, the provision of explicit building codes and regulations that incorporates green building issues are necessary to ensure seamless and effective project delivery. As posited by Isa, Alias [36], the regulatory codes that meet the sustainability objectives help to drive green building project practices, by setting out concise conditions that project participants need to follow. Finally, the implication of the factors above is that they can help to achieve success in the delivery of green buildings when implemented. However, the factors are only emphasizing on the participation of the construction professionals that are involved in the green building project delivery process. Despite being a very important project participant that is at the centre of sustainability decisions and the implementation of sustainable building features, none of the factors emphasize on project owners. Therefore, it appears that project owners in the construction industry are being left out of the activities leading to the successful delivery of green buildings. This gap is being addressed in this study. 2.2. Towards a conceptual framework of project owners’ motivation and commitment for ensuring success in the delivery of green buildings A framework of the synergy between motivation and owner commitment is developed in this section. It is divided into two parts. The first part relies on the self-determination of theory (SDT) of motivation to identify the concept of motivation and its dimensions for green building project delivery. The second part emphasises on the factors of owner commitment for success in the delivery of green buildings. It is expected that the framework will guide the exploration of project owners’ views about their motivations and commitments towards successful delivery of green buildings. 2.3. Motivation The concept of green building is regarded as a change phenomenon, from conventional to a sustainable mode of physical development in the construction industry. However, owing to such reasons as difficult project delivery process [40], and barriers such as such high initial costs and low knowledge of the processes of green building, which prevent an easy delivery of green buildings [41,42], such a change is a difficult one to embrace in the

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construction industry. Hence, motivation is regarded as the necessary means to accelerate this change in the industry [43]. The pervasive motivations for embracing the concept of green building in the construction industry are the individual level motivations of project participants. In other words, the motivation is exhibited by the individual, which contrasts group or organisational levels of motivation. For instance, the concern for environmental protection and respect for government policies and regulations are individual level motivations of project participants for embracing green building [44]. Particularly the government policies, project participants subscribe to different incentive policies of the government such as density bonus and special loans to develop green buildings [45,46]. In this instance, despite being an individual level motivation, the government incentives suggest an external influence on the project participants to embrace green building. Furthermore, evidence suggests that project participants embrace green building development due to the functional benefits associated with green buildings [47,48]. Some of the benefits are energy and water conservation, as well as improved indoor environmental quality [49]. 2.4. Owner commitment For the conventional project delivery, project owners’ involvement can be traced to the time of the reports of Latham [58] and Construction [59] in the UK construction industry. The reports recommended that project owners should increase their activeness and undertake additional responsibilities in the project delivery process to improve on the underachievement in the United Kingdom construction industry at the time. With the emergence of green building, the involvement of project owners in the delivery process is regarded as owner commitment [60]. According to Franz, Leitcht and Riley [61], the forms of owner commitment include exhibition of influence, devotion and dedication to the green building project delivery, to ensure project success, particularly in the respect of the traditional, sustainability and safety performances [15]. Hence, owner commitment is another factor of success for the delivery of green buildings. Additionally, the impact of this success factor is very high because it involves the project owners themselves who are normally at the centre of taking sustainability decisions [62]. Olanipekun et al. [63] revealed the indicators of how project owners exemplify commitment to the green building project delivery process. Project owners exemplify their commitment by educating other project participants on how they can achieve sustainable building objectives in the green building project delivery [64]. For instance, the account of Bornais [65] revealed that project owners are the key source of design input to educational green buildings in the Canadian construction industry. Project owners also exemplify their commitment by promoting integration among other project participants such as designers, engineers and modellers [31]. They do this by bringing them together early in the project delivery [66] and by commissioning those who have previously worked together [67]. It is also owner commitment when project owners indicate their “green or sustainable” intention at the early stage in the project delivery [10]. The preferred stage to introduce green intentions should not be later than the design stage [10]. To do otherwise by introducing green building features late in the project delivery stage makes it difficult for project participants to implement sustainability objectives [68]. Furthermore, when project owners provide vision statements that contains the goals, objectives and scope of green building requirements, documented in a clear, concise and communicable manner, it indicates their commitment to the green building project delivery [69,70]. The commissioning of separate consultants to

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use the criteria of one or more green building rating systems to demonstrate to other project participants on how to undertake green building delivery process indicates owner commitment [39,71]. Meanwhile, as the difficult delivery of green buildings may lessen the performance of the participants involved, the deliberate actions on the part of project owners to stimulate their performance indicates owner commitment [15]. Some of these actions are contract incentives [72], and periodic performance meeting, evaluation and rewards (Robichaud & Anantatmula, 2010). Other indicators are the empowering of project participants to come up with more innovative sustainability solutions [38] and support from the top echelon in the project owners’ companies [24]. Given the above, the following section conceptualises the synergy between motivation and owner commitment for successful delivery of green buildings. 2.5. Conceptual framework As illustrated in Fig. 1, the conceptual framework for exploring project owners’ views about the successful delivery of green building projects comprises of both motivation and owner commitment.
Motivation: According to Ryan and Deci [54], to be motivated means to be moved to do something. Dubin [90] defined motivation as something that moves a person to action, and continues the person in the course of action that is already initiated. As described in the previous section, motivation as used in this conceptual framework is that which increases the commitment of project owners to ensure success in the delivery of green building projects [65].
Owner commitment: Owner commitment is an important factor for ensuring success in the delivery of green building projects and includes eight indicators described previously. As used in the conceptual framework, owner commitment is the action(s) of project owners during the delivery of green building projects to ensure success. In addition, these actions are expected to be enhanced by the influence of project owners motivation for the successful delivery of green building projects. Furthermore, the arrow directions in Fig. 1 provides more clarity of the conceptual framework. It shows that the motivation of project owners influences their commitment, and together, both influencing successful delivery of green buildings. 3. Research methodology e testing the framework The testing of the conceptual framework involves an empirical exploratory investigation of project owners in the Australian construction industry and subsequently, an explanation of the findings using the SDT of motivation. The exploratory investigation of the views of the project owners of executed green buildings in the Australian construction industry aligns with the qualitative research methodology in that it reveals the meanings that people attach to their experiences of the real

Fig. 1. Illustration of the conceptual framework. Research methodology e Testing the framework.

world [73]. Hence, the exploratory approach is to obtain an indepth view of the project owners about their motivations and commitments towards successful delivery of green buildings [74]. Since 2003, the development of green building has advanced in Australia with many project owners who are members of the Green Building Council of Australia (GBCA) embarking on the delivery of different kinds of green buildings [75,76]. Therefore, the country is a valid context of investigation. To partake in the study, the members of the GBCA who identified as project owners (or developers) were selected from the GBCA website (http://www.gbca.org.au/ project-directory.asp) based on the following.
Have completed one or more green buildings that could be identified in the database of GBCA
Have experience not less than 5 years in the project delivery of green buildings in the Australian construction industry. In the Australian construction industry, a professional working for 5 years or more is considered to have an adequate exposure and experience of events, and capable of giving insights about issues under consideration either in practice or in theory (See Ref. [89]). This manner of sampling is the purposive sampling. The reason for using purposive sampling is that it enabled the selection of project owners with wealth of exposure to the delivery of green buildings in Australia. This is beneficial because very deep views on project owners’ motivation and their commitment for successful delivery of green buildings can be obtained [73]. To explore the views of the project owners, an open-ended questionnaire was used for collection of data. As different from the closed ended type, the open-ended questionnaire allows respondents to provide their own views without limiting them to a determined set of potential answers [77]. Additionally, while interviewing is a common method of exploring respondents’ views [74], the open-ended questionnaire is a good alternative. According to Gafni et al. [78], the open-ended questionnaire method of data collection can measure constructs such as motivation in the same or even better way than the interview method, particularly in ensuring objectivity, standardisation, and avoidance of biases. The open-ended questionnaire was structured into two different sections. The first one contains questions about the preliminary information of the respondents such as the years of experience in green building project delivery; these were included to justify the quality of the selected project owners and their responses. The second section contains the main questions with textboxes for response. The main questions are equally the purposes of undertaking the research and to achieve the aim of study. They are as follows. 1. Is the motivation of project owners relevant for improving the delivery performance of green buildings? 2. Are there specific project owner commitment(s) that are important to ensure success in the delivery of green buildings? 3. Do the motivation of project owners help to increase their commitment towards improving the delivery performance of green buildings. This question further extends to whether extrinsic type of motivation (EXT), particularly the policy provisions by the government, are effective motivation for increasing green building practices. In addition, the project owners were asked how to enhance the effect of the policy provisions. The open-ended questionnaire was administered to the respondents through the University online data collection model. As an online mode, the respondents are better able to choose their

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preferred time and place, while they could also save, and return to complete the open-ended questions anytime they wanted [79]. The administration period took one month, and during the time, the respondents were sent reminders on three occasions, at one-week intervals, to complete their response to the questions. The data obtained from the background information of respondents was analysed with frequency calculations, while the main questions were analysed using content analysis. The content analysis helped to weave the information from the data obtained into new concepts [80]. To achieve this, the researchers immersed themselves in the data with an open mind to identify meaningful subjects that confirms the conceptual framework (or otherwise) [80]. To this end, the researchers’ views and the way they perceive the world also form part of the data analysis process. As mentioned previously, the findings from the empirical investigation are theoretically grounded by using the SDT of motivation to explain them. The SDT of motivation is often used for examining the individual level motivation for embracing green building in the construction industry [50e52]. The theory states that there are varying types of motivation responsible for human behaviour for the performance or the undertaking of an act [53]. One type is the intrinsic motivation which refers to the range of behaviours or actions performed by a person out of personal volition or endorsement [54]. As a result, this type of motivation is independent of external context [50]. In contrast, the other type is the extrinsic motivation; which refers to the behaviours or actions taken to obtain specific outcomes such as incentives and rewards, or avoid something negative [55,56]. Hence, it is dependent on an external context. Such behaviours or actions are means to an end as they are motivated because of their instrumental values [54,57]. Both the intrinsic and extrinsic types of motivation are used to explain the project owners’ views about the delivery of green building projects. 4. Findings and discussion As shown in Table 2, ten project owners (PO1-PO10) satisfied the selection criteria above and responses to the proposed questions were obtained from them. It could be seen that the project owners have broad experience in green building project delivery in Australia. The least experienced are the project owners PO3 and PO6, both having five years of experience respectively, while the most experienced is the project owner PO2, who has an experience of 40 years. For the latter, the number of years of experience of the project owner predates 2003 when the development of green building started in Australia. It is possible that project owner may have been practicing in other countries such as the USA and the UK where the idea of green building has been in existence since the 1970s [81]. For the others, their years of experience fall approximately within, or below the period when f green building

Table 2 Background information of project owners. Project owners

Years of experience

Types of project owners’ organisation

PO1 PO2 PO3 PO4 PO5 PO6 PO7 PO8 PO9 PO10

7 40 5 15 10 5 15 7 6 7

Public Educational Private Private Developer Public Educational Commercial Private Construction Private Developer Private Developer

PO ¼ Project owner.

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development commenced in Australia in 2003. This was 15 years ago. Still, the average of the years of experience of all the project owners combined is about 12 years. The inference is that these project owners (PO1 - PO10) have been enriching their experience since the time green building development commenced in Australia. Therefore, their views can be relied upon to test the conceptual framework. Furthermore, the project owners’ organisations cover both the private and public sectors. Seven of them are in the private sector and they are the project owners PO2, PO3, PO6, PO7, PO8, PO9 and PO10. Of note, in the private sector, commercial priority is prevalent in the form of profits, business success, market share of green buildings [82]. Contrastingly, there are three public sector project owners (PO1, PO4, PO5) such as the Universities and government agencies. For these ones, their interests in green building project delivery is not a commercial one. Nevertheless, the combined private and public sector-based project owners offer an enriched of responses for testing of the conceptual framework. The project owners were asked whether their motivations are relevant to enhance the delivery performance of green buildings. All of the project owners (PO1-PO10) agree to the question. For instance, PO6 agrees because green building is costly, and entails a lot of administrative requirements in Australia, while PO4 agrees because of the low understanding of the benefits of green buildings in the green building market place. From these, it could be inferred that the project owners’ need for motivation is related to the problems associated with green buildings. Many studies have explored this association [41,49,83e86]. The summary is that both are mutually inclusive. As a result, enhancing the motivation automatically equates to minimising the barriers to green building [49]. The project owners were also asked whether there are specific owner commitments that are critical to ensure success in the delivery of green buildings. While the project owners PO2 & PO3 did not respond, all the others agree that they partake in the green building project delivery as an expression of their commitment. As expressed by the project owner PO1, s\he champions the green concept from very early in the delivery of green building project, while PO8 stated that s\he explicitly provides sustainable building targets and aspirations for the project participants to follow. Both correspond to the factors of owner commitment to reveal the “green or sustainable” intention of the project owner early in the project delivery [10] and to provide vision statements that contains the goals, objectives and scope of green building requirements [69] respectively. Furthermore, in line with Zou and Couani [39], the project owner PO5 commissions separate and independent consultants to guide other project participants in the design and construction process. PO4 mentioned provision of funds for project delivery but linked it to the implementation of sustainability initiatives. Otherwise, it would not be owner commitment since owner-funding is not limited to only green buildings. Summarily, these submissions confirm the practice of owner commitment to green building project delivery in Australia. Additionally, it confirms project owners as direct contributors to green building project delivery through the different indicators of owner commitment [63]. Furthermore, the project owners were asked whether their motivation and commitment contribute to improving the delivery performance of green buildings. Additionally, they were asked whether the extrinsic type of motivation (EXT), particularly the policy provisions by the government, are effective motivation for enhancing green building practices. All the project owners agree that they need some level of motivation to exhibit commitments towards the success of green building project delivery. For instance, the project owner PO1 explicitly stated that s\he must be motivated

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for any commitment happen. The project owners PO2, PO3, PO8 and PO10 stated that intrinsic motivation (such as altruistic beliefs in resource conservation) that comes from within them is very critical to drive their commitments. They argued that they are more driven by this type of motivation than the extrinsic motivation. The project owner PO7 admitted that the intrinsic motivation is necessary to expend more time and effort to realise sustainability. These submissions align with the very few studies that focused on the effects of intrinsic motivation to drive green building practices in the construction industry. For instance, designers are intrinsically motivated to incorporate sustainability concepts in their designs [50], while construction professionals opine that the intrinsic motivation of project owners is essential to increase their commitments towards achieving success in green building project delivery [52]. Therefore, the challenges are to devise strategies to invoke the intrinsic motivation of project owners towards sustainability practices, while more studies are necessary to further confirm the effects of intrinsic motivation on accentuating green building practices in construction. As for extrinsic motivation, they are the incentive policies and programs provided by the government to drive green building practices. An example is the Australian government’s one billion Green Infrastructure Fund (GIF) provision between 2008 and 2013. Many studies did reveal that the incentive policies of the government are effective extrinsic motivation of green building practices [44,45,48,87]. In the USA for instance, different incentive policies by the government such as density bonus, expedited permitting effectively drives green building practices in the country [45]. However, this study is the first to compare the effectiveness of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from the views of project owners in the construction industry. The project owners opine that the latter is less effective driver of green building practices in Australia. As revealed in Van der Heijden [88], many incentive policies exist in Australia. Therefore, the problem is not the lack of incentive policies. From the views of the project owners, the problem is predominantly the lack of harmony in the existing incentive policies and programs. The project owner PO8 voiced the lack of clear and concise policy of the government on sustainability issues pertaining to green buildings. Among the States in Australia, the project owner PO6 revealed the problem of policy inconsistency, was described as very confusing for project owners to keep up with, while PO1 faulted the designing and the implementing of these policies. S\he stated that the policies do not grant enough time for project owners and other participants to put together the needed documentations to benefit from the policy incentives. It is therefore expedient to harmonise the existing incentive policies for green building practices in this country in other to achieve better outcomes. This country can also learn from the US where the incentive policies of the government are very effective. Given their practical experience and wealth of exposure to the delivery of green building in construction industry, the responding project owners (PO1-PO10) were asked to provide suggestions that can be employed enhance the effectiveness of the policy provisions by the government. Equally, with no known study to have been conducted on this aspect in the construction industry, the views of the project owners will add to the body of knowledge. All the project owners agree that there is a need for the government to revisit the policies for green building practices in Australia, thus, some strategies were suggested. The project owner PO8 advised that the policies for green buildings should form part of the existing policies for broader environmental issues and climate change in Australia. PO9 suggested the need for more policy provisions, particularly the policies that are financially benefitting ones. The project owner PO7 stated that such policy can encourage the

implementation of sustainable building technologies. The project owner PO9 however suggested that more funding will be required in such context. Furthermore, the project owners PO1 & PO8 suggested that policy provisions should be designed to achieve specific goals, such as energy savings or optimum life-cycle cost savings. The project owner PO8 stated that making vague policy provisions by the government is very confusing for industry operators to understand and observe. The project owner PO6 suggested the need for consistency in policy provisions. The emphasis here is to harmonise the different policies in the Australian States and local governments. The project owners PO4 & PO10 suggested that the existing requirements such as the National Construction Code (NCC), Part J, which stipulates sustainability requirements for buildings, should be raised. While the project owner PO4 proposed a minimum 5e6 Star Green Star for public projects, the project owner PO10 stressed that the government should enforce the compliance to future policy provisions. The project owner PO9 suggested the need for harsher penalties such as the refusal of development application should projects not incorporate significant sustainability requirements. As suggested by the project owner PO7, it may require new legislations. With all the above, the project owner PO8 was hopeful that, in future, the extrinsic type of motivation raise the Australian green building market to the level of those in the UK and Scandinavian countries. 5. Conclusion This study has explored the views of project owners to empirically test the conceptual framework that the motivation and commitment of project owners can lead to success in the green building project delivery. This study concludes that the conceptual framework is true, and the following conclusions and implications can be drawn. 1. The project owners’ motivation is very relevant to ensure success in the green building project delivery 2. The implementation of owner commitment in the green building project delivery is evident in the Australian construction industry. Therefore, it signifies ability of project owners to contribute directly to sustainability practices during green building project delivery 3. The project owners’ motivation enhances their commitments towards success in the green building project delivery. However, it presents a challenge to devise strategies to invoke the intrinsic motivation of project owners towards sustainability practices, while more studies are required to confirm the effects of intrinsic motivation on accentuating green building practices in construction 4. The extrinsic type of motivation which are mainly the incentive policies and programs of the government are less effective to drive green building practices than the intrinsic type. In Australia, the problem is not the lack of incentive policies and programs of the government. Rather, it is the lack of harmony in the existing incentive policies and programs. 5. To address, the problem, the government has an additional role to revisit the existing incentive policies and programs and harmonise them towards enhancing green building practices in the Australian construction industry. With the project owners making several suggestions in this direction, the Australian government should incorporate their views in the attempt to reshape the policy platform for enhancing green building development in the country. The government can also learn from other countries such as the USA where the incentive policies and programs are effectively driving green building practices

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Based on these conclusions and their implications, further areas of research are observed. The testing of the conceptual framework involves 10 project owners. For more generalisation of findings, this number should be widened using a survey research approach. Project owners operate in different business landscapes that shape their views and positions. Therefore, it is necessary to compare the views of project owners in the private and public sectors and explore the differences. This could further deepen the owner commitment to green building project delivery. There are many strategies for invoking the intrinsic motivation of individuals in the field of psychology. These should be adapted to clearly specify how to increase the intrinsic motivation of owners for green building practices. In Australia, policy learning frameworks should also be deployed to learn from the USA where the incentive policies of the government are effective drivers of green building practices. 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