Driving-paths of green buildings industry (GBI) from stakeholders’ green behavior based on the network analysis

The development of green buildings industry is significant to achieve global sustainable development goals. In China, the level of green buildings industry has great development space. However, the adoption of green buildings is often hindered by complicated behavior of different stakeholders to some extent. This research aims at analyzing the complex relationships among stakeholders’ green behavior and exploring the driving-paths for green buildings industry based on the network analysis. The green behavior system of six major stakeholders was constructed based on the previous literatures. Then, whole-network analysis explores the visual relationships through questionnaires data, while ego-network analysis presenting by upwards and downwards structure mines the vital driving-paths for green buildings industry. Finally the study reveals, (i) the end-users are critical to the development direction of green buildings industry; (ii) when issuing the incentive policies for green buildings, government should consider creating trade-offs between the incremental cost and profit; (iii) as the main body of green innovation, designers and suppliers are overdependent on governmental incentives. Strategically, these findings provide a visual analysis model for stakeholders to carry out green strategies and transformation upgrading.