A Qualitative Study of Motivation and Influences for Academic Green Building Developments in Australian Universities

Abstract

Green building projects have been adopted by many universities in Australia as part of their renovation and expansion. In order to investigate the motivations of academic decision makers to invest in green facilities, a comprehensive analysis of media articles of 24 green academic buildings approved by the Green Building Council of Australia (between 2004 and 2011) were analysed using a qualitative analytical approach based on grounded theory. Findings in this work show that the decision makers in Australian universities are more likely to be driven by the direct benefits green buildings brought to the universities, enhancing universities’ reputation and meeting the specific needs for education and research. Other factors that deal with improving universities’ financial conditions and environmental protection were found to be a lower significance for investments. However the connections between the motivating factors also reveal the indirect benefits of green buildings which are an enhancement in reputation by fulfilling an environmental protection responsibility and research capacity enhancement by supplying technical study opportunities for students and researchers. This paper proposes an approach to deal with the complex network of vague and subjective concepts of the green buildings comprehension. It supplies researchers with tools for analysing abstract concepts and determining their interactions.

Motivating Project Owners to Increase Their Commitment towards Improving the Delivery Performance of Green Building Projects

“…Identity and enhanced reputation in the society or a community of professional practice is another motivation for green building practices, especially for large project owners (M3). As revealed by Li, et al (2013) "lofty image among competitors" is the core driver of motivation for delivering green building projects in Australian universities. Furthermore, persuasive influence or inspiration is also a motivation for delivering green building projects ) (M4).…”

“…The motivation delivery of educational green building projects is tied to the vision and mission of the parent organisation. As revealed by Li, Strezov, and Amati (2013), the delivery of green building projects in Australian Universities is to obtain enhanced reputation from the public and competitors and to meet specific needs of research for learning and teaching especially in the area of sustainability, and to provide a platform for innovation and collaboration among local and international experts. However, less prominent motivations for the delivery of educational green building projects are the expectations of financial gains and concern for environmental protection (Li, et al, 2013).…”

“…According to Li, et al (2013), further investigation in this direction is needed to gain better understanding of such motivation from project owners' perspectives.…”

“…The altruistic or personal moral norms and values that are pro-environmental and provoking green building intent (Aliagha, et al, 2013;Choi, 2010a;Joachim, et al, 2015) M3 The enhancement of reputation for green building ownership (Li, et al, 2013) …”

“…Previous studies on this issue are narrow in scope, focusing only on subjective views of individuals in a Canadian University (Li, et al, 2013), and media articles on 24 education green buildings projects in Australia (Richardson & Lynes, 2007). Other studies focused on the perspectives of contractors (Qi, et al, 2010), and other building stakeholders such as architects and engineers (Ahn, et al, 2013;Cole, 2011;Feige, et al, 2011;Wallbauma, et al, 2010).…”