Modelling the environmental, economic and social impacts of coronavirus pandemic on the construction industry

Abstract

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caught the whole world unaware and has negatively impacted all segments of several countries’ economies. Consequently, the construction industry in the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) region is not left out of this significant impact that has affected all the industry stakeholders and led to the abandonment of many construction projects due to poor cash flow. This article aims to model the pandemic’s environmental, economic, and social effects on the construction industry. The research method includes a scoping review used to validate impacts identified in the literature. The impacts identified were then used to develop questionnaires that were administered to construction professionals in the SSA region. The questionnaire data were evaluated with Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The empirical model outputs highlight that the economic impact has the highest contribution to the overall shock of the pandemic. The study revealed that a better understanding of this impact would help industry stakeholders develop policies that will enhance construction industry performance and thus limit the pandemic impact on the industry. The outcome of this project may also apply to other sectors of the economy and countries globally.