Critical barriers to green building technologies adoption in developing countries: The case of Ghana

Abstract

Although green building technologies (GBTs) have been advocated in the construction industry to address sustainability issues, their adoption is still plagued with barriers. The barriers that hinder GBTs adoption need detailed investigation. However, few studies have been conducted on the barriers to GBTs adoption in developing countries such as Ghana. This study aims to investigate the critical barriers to GBTs adoption with reference to the Ghanaian construction market. To achieve the objective, 26 barriers were identified from a comprehensive literature review, and a questionnaire survey was performed with 43 professionals with green building experience. The ranking analysis results indicated that 20 barriers were critical. The top three most critical barriers were higher costs of GBTs, lack of government incentives, and lack of financing schemes (e.g., bank loans). A comparative analysis showed that while the most critical barriers to GBTs adoption in the developing country of Ghana mostly vary from those in the developed countries of the US, Canada, and Australia, higher costs of GBTs remains a top barrier in all the countries. Furthermore, factor analysis revealed that the underlying grouped barriers for the 20 critical barriers were government-related, human-related, knowledge and information-related, market-related, and cost and risk-related barriers. This study also showed that the most dominant of the five underlying groups was government-related barriers, which highlights the government's role in promoting GBTs adoption in Ghana. This study adds to the green building literature by analyzing GBTs adoption barriers within the context of a developing country, which could help policy makers and practitioners take suitable measures to mitigate the barriers and thereby promote the GBTs adoption. Future research will investigate the interrelationships between the critical barriers and their impacts on the GBTs adoption activity.