Abstract
Bamboo is commonly considered as a green, environmentally friendly material. However, it appears that bamboo finds limited application in the form of green building materials in the Chinese construction sector. In order to explain this phenomenon and promote the material’s application, this study summarizes the benefits of applying bamboo materials and presents an analysis on barriers affecting the effective application of bamboo materials in this specific building sector. Research data are collected from both literature surveys and semi-structured interviews with a group of carefully selected experts from the Chinese building sector. Fifteen characteristic barriers are identified, such as ineffective action by government departments. An integrative analysis is conducted, including investigation on the hierarchy structure among characteristic barriers using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) method and the classification of barriers from a driving-driven perspective using the Cross-impact Matrix Multiplication Applied to Classification (MICMAC) technique. This classification provides a different profile for the characteristic barriers from that of traditional barrier analysis methods. The findings provide valuable references for helping policy makers and practitioners adopt effective policies and measures to promote the application of bamboo for green materials in building sector.
Highlights
The construction industry is commonly accountable for various environmental problems [1]
Benefits of applying bamboo as a green material have been summarized in this paper from five perspectives: large-scale and fast growth, lightweight and high strength, low-cost, environmentally friendly, and social benefits
Because of the stagnation of bamboo material development in China, this application has encountered various barriers to overcome in the current Chinese building sector
Summary
The construction industry is commonly accountable for various environmental problems [1]. The most common construction systems employed in almost every project are energy-intensive and emit high levels of greenhouse gases such as CO2, as they mainly adopt concrete in the form of blocks and/or other structural elements [2,3]. According to the estimations by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center [4], since 2007 China has become the world’s largest CO2 emitter. Others commented that China’s CO2 emissions have significant influences on global climate change [6]. Promotion of green building materials in China is a local issue but has significant positive impact on global climate
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