Keywords

1 Introduction

For a decade, the Malaysian government has initiated a number of measures to ensure that sustainable development goals are achieved in the construction industry. At the same time, there has been research that has established the need for the rethinking of strategies to implement sustainability in construction projects [9], examined the understanding of the concept of sustainability amongst property developers [18], assessed the readiness of the developers towards green home development [8], examined the barriers to adoption of sustainable buildings [14], evaluated the benefits of supplying sustainable housing [10], and investigated the reasons for the supply of sustainable housing [11] in Malaysia. In fact, Shari and Soebarto [14] described the multiple interests towards sustainable construction in Malaysia as ‘top-down and bottom-up pressures’. Paradoxically, the rate of demand and supply of the sustainable housing has been low and slow, in both absolute and relative terms. For instance, there are six sustainable construction guidelines in Malaysia, and five of them are mainly for buildings projects. The number of certified buildings after completion and verification assessment (CVA) by Green Building Index (GBI) Malaysia which is considered as the most recognised by the industrial players and stakeholders for the last six years is less than 500 (Table 1). Whilst data for the previous years since the inception of the guideline in 2009 are not available, it is not difficult to argue that the total certified buildings are less than 200. However, whilst 2069 buildings have been certified to meet the design requirements, only 368 buildings have received the final certification after construction during the last six years. This represents less than 20%. Therefore, more than 6 million housing need to be upgraded to include green features.

Table 1 Summary of GBI-certified projects by year, on 15 December 2018
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Meanwhile, the total number of residential buildings in 368 buildings is only about 42%. Similarly, during this period, the certifications for the residential buildings are not renewed. It is also obvious that the increment rate is not fast. In fact, the Malaysian construction industry is entangled with sustainable practices and activities on account of numerous construction defects, delays, high costs and time overruns, increasing accidents on sites, volume of generated wastes, low productivity, pollution, labour exploitation and abuse, claims and disputes, and environmental degradation. A sustainable building is a building that is designed, constructed, operated, and maintained to address these problems. Consequently, from a research perspective, there is an urgent need to close this gap that exists between practice and research/theory. Therefore, this current research aims to investigate the barriers stopping the supply of housing. By so doing, it seeks to provide reference tools for government, industry, public, academic, and homeowners towards the provision and operations of affordable housing that is in compliance with the sustainability requirements in line with the global best practices. However, before moving on, we will make a clarification regarding the sustainable buildings. Some writers tend to distinguish between sustainable building and green building. Nevertheless, in this study, both terms and phrases are the same and they are used interchangeably.

2 Theoretical Framework and Background

An extensive review of the literature revealed that sustainable development or sustainability has many interpretations but all the definitions have taken their roots from the definition and explanations put forward in a report of the Brundtland Commission [10]. The topical issues in the efforts towards sustainable development are the need to integrate economic, environmental, and social aspects in the decision-making [1, 4, 15] to increase productivity, enhance integration, reduce wastes, and increase well-being. The bottom line is that, in the current global scenario, we are currently consuming more than what the earth can productively support, and producing and discharging wastes that are far beyond what the earth can accommodate. At a practical level, sustainable development is a practice that integrates various criteria, including energy efficiency, community, waste minimisation, water efficiency, social impacts, good indoor environment, material control, ethic practices, zoning, pollution control, life cost, user-friendliness, and user comfort [12].

The impact of building construction and operation on sustainability issues is huge. For instance, buildings consume more than 40% of the world’s energy, release one-third of the CO2, use about 25% of harvested woods, release about 50% of fluorocarbons, produce 40% landfill materials, use 45% of the energy in operations, emit 40% of greenhouse emissions, and use 15% of the world’s usable water. Olanrewaju et al. [10] explained that the production [brief, design, and construction] and use of sustainable buildings influence a variety of criteria, especially the materials, components, design, layout, and delivery process. The location, size, design, materials used, procurement strategies, maintenance, and operation of housing make the housing delivery threaten the fundamental aspects of sustainability. Sustainable buildings are cheap, efficient, attractive, pleasant, and satisfying because they help to (1) reduce water requirements; (2) use localised materials, components, and labour; (3) improve energy efficiently; (4) reduce traffic and transportation costs; (5) generate their own energy; and (6) contribute to the decarbonisation of the built environment. Because of the compelling benefits of sustainable buildings, many governments have made policies to increase the uptake of the supply and demand for sustainable buildings.

The Malaysian government and the construction industry recognise the need to increase the supply of sustainable construction projects (Government of Malaysia, 2010). In particular, in order to achieve the government’s aim of incorporating green technology into the country’s construction industry, policies and regulations have been established and green rating tools have been developed by the industry and government. The tools are the Green Performance Assessment System (Green PASS), Skim Penilaian Penarafan Hijau JKR (PH JKR), Malaysian Carbon Reduction and Environmental Sustainability Tool, (MyCREST), Green Real Estate (GreenRE), and Green Building Index (GBI). The Sustainable INFRASTAR, which aims to act as a design and measurement tool to ensure consideration of sustainable elements and is incorporated early on in the development of the project, was developed in 2018 [2]. The Sustainable INFRASTAR is specific to infrastructure projects other than the building portion. However, despite these efforts, the rates of supply and demand for the sustainable buildings have been low and slow. Corroborating this view, Olanrewaju et al. [10] found that the major impediment obstructing the adoptions, implementations, and practices of sustainability in construction project delivery is the lack of a concise and clear framework. Apart from the policies’ formulations and implementations, and supported by the industry, research, which has been advocated for the adoption and implementation of sustainability in the construction industry, has been conducted [8, 14, 18]. However, despite the scientific activities and policies, and implementation with the support from the professional bodies, the adoption of the sustainable residential building is low and, further, the previous research is not specific to housing, but rather to the general buildings of the construction industry as a whole, and is qualitatively driven; and, hence, it is hindering the systemic decisions, generalisability, and applications. This research aims to fill this gap.

3 Research Design

The question that this research seeks an answer to is ‘What are the barriers to the adoption of sustainable housing?’ It is imperative to know the barriers in order to provide cogent measures to improve the uptake of sustainable buildings. The primary data collected were based on convenience sampling. Like other survey methods, it is inductive in nature. Convenience sampling is a data collection method where the survey is administered to available, accessible, and willing respondents. The method is appropriate where sufficient information on the population size and sample frame is not available. Its findings may not be generalisable; however, with a large number of respondents, the findings can be typical. Thus, its basic premise is that if sufficient data are collected and objectivity is maintained, the results will be a representative of the population.

The questionnaire consists of two sections, namely participants’ demographic information and perceived barriers towards green building adoption in Malaysia. Thirteen questions were prepared for Section A, and thirty questions were prepared for Section B. The specific questions can be found in the following analysis.

The questionnaires were administered to the respondents through online surveys to the stakeholders in the building industry. The online survey was launched on 6 August 2018 and was open until 10 September 2018, but because of a low response rate, it was re-conducted on 1 November 2018 until 12 December 2018. The respondents were asked, based on their current evidence, to measure the extent to which the barriers obstruct the adoption of sustainable housing in Malaysia on a five-point Likert scale, where 1 = not critical, 2 = somewhat critical, 3 = critical, 4 = very critical, and 5 = extremely critical. The extent of the criticality of the barriers to obstruct the adoption of sustainable residential buildings was determined by the Average Relative Index (ARI) (Eq. 1).

$${\text{ARI}} = \frac{{\sum\nolimits_{i = 0}^{5} {a_{i} x_{i} } }}{{5\sum\nolimits_{i = 0}^{5} {x_{i} } }} \times 100$$
(1)

where \(a_{i}\) was the index of a group; constant expressed the weight given to the group; xi was the frequency of the responses; i = 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; and described as below: \(x_{1} ,x_{2} ,x_{3} ,x_{4} ,x_{5}\); the frequencies of the responses were corresponding to \(a_{1} = 1,a_{2} = 2,a_{3} = 3,a_{4} = 4,a_{5} = 5\), respectively. For interpretation, an ARI score of 1.00–20.00 was denoted as not critical, 21.00–40.00 was denoted as somewhat critical, 41.00–60.00 was denoted as critical, 61.00–80.00 was denoted as very critical, and 81.00–100.00 was denoted as extremely critical. There was a pooled difference of 1.0% between each of the scales. The barrier with the highest ARI score was the major barrier to the adoption of a sustainable residential building. All the constructs were positively worded. To ensure that the results would not be influenced by the authors, missing data were not replaced with either a mean or mode of the valid response. The mode technique was used to analyse the demography of the respondents. In order to test the hypotheses, whether each of the barriers could obstruct the adoption of sustainable buildings or not, one-sample t-test was conducted. The other statistical tests computed were the one-way t-test, Cronbach’s alpha tests, validity, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy, Bartlett’s test of sphericity, mode, standard deviation, or as the case may be. The mode was also used to determine the distribution of the respondents with respect to the scales. All data gathered adopted the SAS Enterprise Guide 7.1 for analysis.

3.1 Analysing the Results of the Survey

More than 3000 online survey forms were administered to the respondents; however, only 110 completed responses were received during the survey period, lasting more than three months. The results are presented in tables and figures and discussed in the following sections.

3.2 Demographic Profiles of the Respondents

Some 70% of the respondents obtained a minimum of B.Sc. degree (Table 2), and most (36%) of the respondents had their degrees in architecture and construction management (Fig. 1). The majority of those with Ph.D.s had their degree in architecture, and most of those with a B.Sc. had their degree in construction management. Most of the respondents held strategic positions (Table 3); more than 50% had more than 5 years of working experience (Table 4); approximately 12% had more than 20 years working experience. Most of the respondents worked with contracting organisations, whilst approximately 25% were with architectural firms (Table 5).

Table 2 Highest academic qualification
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Fig. 1
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Highest academic qualification

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Table 3 Current position in the organisation
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Table 4 Respondent’s working experience
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Table 5 Respondent’s type of organisation
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The results revealed that most of the survey respondents were involved in the development of sustainable buildings at the design and construction phases (Fig. 2). Based on their practical experience, close to 95% of the respondents confirmed that the price of sustainable buildings was higher than conventional buildings by more than 5% (Table 5). In fact, 15% of the respondents measured that sustainable buildings were expensive by more than 20% as compared to conventional buildings.

Fig. 2
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Cycle of barriers

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4 Survey Results

4.1 Analysis of the Barriers Stopping the Adoption of Sustainable Residential Buildings

The reliability test results indicate that the Cronbach’s alpha for each of the barriers was 0.905, and the validity test, using the ‘commonalities’, returned a cumulative average of 0.689. Table 6 contains the t-test statistics to examine the measurements of the population with respect to each of the barriers. The null hypothesis was that each of the barriers will not stop the adoption of sustainable residential buildings (H0: U = U0) and the research hypothesis was that each of the barriers will stop the adoption of sustainable buildings (Hr: U > U0). U0 was the population mean. Two was set as the t-test level. Based on the results (Table 6), the significance (i.e. Pr > |t|) of each of the barriers (Hr: U > U0) showed that the all of the barriers was statistically significant. The degrees of freedom for all the factors were the same at 109. Furthermore, the small standard errors were close to zero. These suggest that the measurements of the respondents with respect to the barriers were reflections of the population. The KMO was very high (0.0852), and Bartlett’s test significance is as follows: x2 (171) = 1004.647, p = 0.000. These statistics suggest that the barriers will obstruct sustainable housing when drawn from a population with a similar background; hence, the information is suitable for the designed aim.

Table 6 One-sample test
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The average of the ARI values for all the barriers was 74.058, and the average standard deviation was 18.083 (Table 7). The standard deviation (SD) for the barriers, being less than 25, was also an indication of consistency. Furthermore, it is obvious that all the barriers based on the distribution of the ARI are very critical barriers in stopping the adoption of sustainable buildings because they fell within the ranges between 61 and 80. The plain interpretations of these statistics are that all the professionals in the housing industry measured that the barriers were those stopping the adoption of sustainable buildings. In particular, whilst 11% measured that the barriers were not critical or were somewhat critical in stopping the adoption of sustainable buildings, 23% agreed that they were actually critical. However, 66% knew that the barriers were very critical or in fact extremely critical in stopping the adoption of sustainable housing.

Table 7 Distribution of statistics
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5 Discussion of the Findings

As previously stated, the degree of the criticality of the barriers to sustainable building delivery by the Malaysian housing market was based on the computation of the ARI. Therefore, the barrier with the highest ARI was the main barrier to the adoption of a sustainable building, whilst the barrier with the lowest ARI was the least of a barrier to sustainable building adoption. The research found the lack of experience of the Malaysian construction industry on the sustainable building as the main barrier. This finding seems to support Zainal Abidin [18] finding that the awareness of the sustainability/sustainable development by the Malaysian property sector was low. Although sustainable development has been around for many years, many industrial players are yet to fully comprehend its meaning, and in fact, many still cast doubt on its purpose and whether it is achievable or not. However, this finding is compelling because it is only when the professionals in the building industry have gathered enough experience and are themselves convinced that they can ‘market’ the green buildings to home buyers and other stakeholders. Maintenance cost has been receiving serious attention lately as clients or homebuyers are now taking whole life appraisal of buildings instead of considering only the initial construction or purchasing cost. Therefore, it is not unexpected that the maintenance factor turned out to be the main barrier to the adoption of sustainable housing.

The sustainable buildings have different maintenance requirements, of which it seems the building industry is cognisant. The maintenance of the sustainable housing would be more challenging. A lack of technological resources to support the supply of sustainable buildings was cited as a major obstacle to the adoption of sustainable buildings. Examples of green building technologies for green housing include IBS, prefabricated concrete solar technology, and a rainwater harvesting system and recycle system. In order to promote the adoption of the sustainable buildings, there is a cogent need to have the technology that will supply the needed materials and components. In fact, it has been argued that to facilitate the adoption of green buildings, GBT must be embraced first [15]. One of the major reasons why sustainable buildings are expensive in Malaysia is because the cost of green materials and components is high since they are not available locally. To bring the cost of sustainable buildings down, a major area that needs attention is materials.

Normally, the cost of materials accounts for not less than 50% of the construction costs. It is interesting to find that the lack of competent labour in sustainable buildings comes next to the lack of technology and close to the lack of experience of building the industry on sustainable buildings. Green materials and components have different compositions as compared to conventional materials and components than the site operatives and professionals are familiar with; hence, a different set of skills and knowledge are required for the design, installation, and assembly of green materials and components. The housing industry will need to provide special training to site operatives on the construction of sustainable buildings.

Research and practice show that sustainable buildings are more expensive as compared to conventional buildings due to many causes, including the barriers discussed in this article. However, empirical evidence in countries including the UK, Australia, and the USA [12] suggests that the differential cost between sustainable buildings and conventional buildings is less than 5%. However, in Malaysia, more than 95% of the survey respondents measured that sustainable buildings were more than 5% higher to conventional buildings. In fact, 50% of the respondents believed that it was more than 15% more expensive than the conventional buildings. With this mind, it is not surprising that the high initial price of green residential buildings compared with the conventional buildings was also found to be a major barrier to the adoption in Malaysia. However, the high initial cost of green buildings as compared to conventional buildings was also found to be a major barrier in England [16]. Moving forward, the research found that homebuyers and home users are not aware of the sustainable buildings.

The general problems amongst the public are what sustainable buildings look like and how to define/describe them and how they benefit them. A lack of awareness of the benefits of green buildings was also a barrier in England [16]. To this extent, the building industry needs to promote and display sustainable buildings in order to create more awareness, especially on the success stories. Research and development costs turned out to be a major barrier to the adoption of sustainable buildings. In general, R&D in Malaysia is low. In fact, construction companies invest less than 1% of their turnover on R&D. This result is not different elsewhere. In Singapore, Hwang and Ng [7] also found the cost of R&D to be amongst the major barriers to green building adoption. For sustainable materials and components, which are mostly imported, it requires some research to examine their suitability and compatibility with the local contents. Some of the locally produced materials would require research to test their practicability and sustainability. This will require an investment in terms of time, expertise, and capital. Presently, there is no strict enforcement to promote or compel the building industry to implement sustainable materials and practices; as well, there are no regulations that compel a homebuyer or homebuyers to buy sustainable buildings. Needless to say, there are incentives for the housing industry and buyers to implement and practice sustainability, but penalties are not strictly enforced. Much of the research on sustainable construction has been qualitative. Consequently, many industrial players are not convinced regarding the benefits of sustainable housing.

One of the main motivators for the adoption of sustainable buildings is active government support. However, as the research indicates, government support is far from being enough. In fact, more than 50% of the respondents considered that government support was low. As previously explained, the technology is very critical for the supply of sustainable materials. Based on 63 in-depth interviews involving stakeholders in residential and mixed-use schemes, William and Dair [16] found that material shortages were a major barrier to green building adoption in England. These similar results were found in Singapore [7]. Therefore, it is not surprising that a lack or shortage of sustainable materials was found to be a barrier to the adoption of sustainable buildings. The research shows that the lack of clear strategies to promote the adoption of sustainable buildings was also a major barrier. The benefits of sustainable buildings need to be communicated to the potential homebuyers. It seems that the Malaysian government is yet to understand and promote the adoption of sustainable buildings. The government and the industry have much to benefit from if sustainable buildings are widely developed. For instance, in China, the government promotes sustainable building development more than the housing developers [4].

The CIDB Malaysia, the Ministry of Works, and other relevant agencies need to be proactive and aggressive in marketing the sustainable building development to organisations, architects, engineers, contractors, manufacturers, and suppliers. Workshops and training are required on the development process and operation of sustainable housing. Research shows that workshops/seminars, education/training, and periodical/magazines are the major sources of information for the active adoptions of sustainable [13]. Homebuyers and occupants need to be convinced of the benefits of sustainable buildings to heighten demand. Thus, it is not surprising to find that the lack of customers’ demand for green buildings will stop its adoption. A recent research in Malaysia found that the main barriers to the adoption of commercial buildings were because clients did not require sustainable commercial buildings [14]. However, it is considered that clients are by nature inexperienced with the construction business and the benefits of sustainable buildings.

Hence, it is the responsibility of the industry to educate the clients and create the awareness. Clients will demand services or products once they are convinced of the benefits. Echoing the importance of regulations and codes, this research found the need for the availability of codes and regulations. This finding is consistent with the recent research that a barrier to sustainable construction in Malaysia was a lack of regulations [3]. Research also found that a lack of regulations, policies, and codes was amongst the barriers to green building adoption in Australia and Ireland [17]. Regulations that could be introduced for sustainable development include building energy codes, appliance standards, and land-use zoning. Through building codes, USD 1.1 billion was saved in 1998 in the USA and appliance and equipment efficiency standards led to cutting electricity consumption by 2.5% and carbon emission by 1.7% in 2000 [6]. A dominant problem in the construction industry is the fragmentation of the delivery process. Therefore, it is not surprising to find that the divided interests among the consultants, contractor, developers and buyers is a clear barrier to the adoption of sustainable buildings. In fact, the lack of consideration of sustainability by project team members was also found to be a major barrier to the adoption of green buildings [14].

To provide feedback and feedforward information to the design and construction teams and to convince stakeholders, especially the homebuyers, home users, and third-party agencies, data on the cost and performance of the existing sustainable buildings are required. In Malaysia, the ‘success story’ data seem to be lacking or not convincing. The design and construction teams are yet to be keeping such data. However, considering that more than 50% of the respondents measured that sustainable housing could be very expensive, it calls for concern. Difficulty in the construction of sustainable buildings is a problem for the adoption of sustainable buildings. This does not come as a surprise with the general lack of experience of the industry in sustainable buildings, lack of technology, and lack of performance data. There is no empirical research that suggests that sustainable buildings take more time to construct as compared to conventional buildings. Because of this, it is surprising that this research found that one of the main barriers to the adoption of sustainable buildings was the longer time required to construct sustainable buildings. A plausible explanation for this is due to the lack of supporting technology, lack of market, and the shortage of sustainable materials and lack of labour. It is equally surprising to find that the Malaysian weather is not friendly to sustainable building development. We are sceptical to interpret this finding. However, good weather may have a negative impact on the supply of industrialised building systems. For instance, because Malaysian is good and encourages site activities throughout the year, investment in IBS construction may not be encouraging.

6 Summary and Suggestions for the Construction Industry

It is extensively recognised that sustainability requirements need to be addressed, and government and stakeholders, including developers, contractors, and third-party agencies, have introduced measures towards these objectives. Yet, there is an apparent low demand and supply of sustainable residential buildings. This article has been able to identify and quantify the barriers stopping the adoption of sustainable residential buildings. Collectively, the reasons for the apparent low supply and practice of sustainable buildings on a greater scale can be summarised in the lack of knowledge and innovation in the construction industry, which could be summarised as the ‘cycle of barriers’ displayed in Fig. 2. The identification and analysis of the barriers can contribute towards developing a framework that supports and promotes the implementation of sustainable buildings in Malaysia. This study has both strategic and tactical implications because it provides feedback and feedforward information to the building industry and the government to achieve the sustainable development goals.