Examining factors affecting sustainable performance of building construction projects in Ghana using structural equation modelling

Abstract

Heavy criticism has faced the construction industry regarding how its activities are detrimental to the environment. The sustainability concept is nascent in the Ghanaian construction industry as most projects primarily focus on reducing their environmental impact thereby neglecting the social and economic effects. This paper seeks to investigate the impacts of building projects on the environmental, economic, and social sustainability pillars through the life cycle lens of building construction projects. The following steps were taken to achieve this objective; (i) selection of indicators through extant literature review; (ii) survey through shared questionnaires; (iii) structural equation modeling to understand relationships. A total of 56 indicators were developed, and 420 valid responses were received from an expert survey which was then coded into IBM SPSS and visualized through AMOS v23.0.0. The final structural SEM model satisfied all goodness-of-fit indices and reliability tests. SEM results indicate the environmental impact should be the most considered when focusing on the sustainable performance of building construction in Ghana, followed by social and economic impacts respectively. Operation and demolition phases reflect the strongest and weakest impact on sustainable building performance respectively, though all phases have a statistically significant relationship with sustainability.