Factors Influence China’s Off-Site Construction Technology Innovation Diffusion

Abstract

Technology innovation is a key to Off-Site Construction (OSC), but it can achieve economic and social benefits through diffusion. Previous research mainly focused on the optimization or on-site applications of OSC technology innovation; little on its diffusion-related analysis. Diffusion performance generally leads to a faster and deeper diffusion of OSC technology innovation. To study what influence the diffusion performance of OSC technology innovation, the authors first determined the research border and proposed four hypotheses, and then conducted a questionnaire in various China’s construction companies. After investigating 119 construction companies for three months, 151 valid responses were collected and analyzed using Hierarchical Regression and bootstrap-based mediation test approaches. The results found that both market and government had significant impacts on the diffusion performance with comparable influence degree (0.282** and 0.255**), the government played a dual-mediating effect with network power simultaneously (effect value is 0.215) and the technical versatility had a significant indirect influence (>0.204**) but weak direct impact (0.094) on the diffusion performance of OSC technology innovation. The conclusions explored the influence mechanism of different factors on the diffusion of OSC technology innovation and provided practical suggestions for both construction companies and government authorities to promote the development of OSC.

A Study on the Incentive Policy of China’s Prefabricated Residential Buildings Based on Evolutionary Game Theory

“…Encouraged by the government's economic incentives, real estate enterprises construct prefabricated houses at the cost of incremental costs, thereby obtaining incremental economic benefits and government subsidies. In turn, it helps to obtain environmental and social benefits for the government to reduce pollution control costs and social governance costs [27].…”

Evaluation of enterprise technology innovation capability in prefabricated construction in China

“…Case enterprises selection PC is in its exploratory stage of development currently in most developing countries, such as China (Mao et al, 2015). PC's promotion is mainly a top-down practice driven by the government and is passively accepted by enterprises (Dou et al, 2019c). The evaluation research on enterprise technology innovation capability in PC can assist enterprises to find weak links and improve economic performance, to stimulate their actively adopting PC technology.…”

Development strategy for prefabricated construction projects: a tripartite evolutionary game based on prospect theory

“…In view of the responses to issued policies from most developers and contractors in the market, governments will improve policy interventions to encourage more enterprises to develop PC projects. The government not only influences but also participates in the development decision-making of developers and contractors (Dou et al, 2019b), to maximize the total social benefits (including the economic benefits of all developers and contractors, and the environmental benefits, in the region). This process satisfies a tripartite evolutionary game.…”

“…The government is rather a supervisor and participant than a coordinator and service provider (Hong et al, 2018). Extant studies have generally regarded policy supervision as an external element to explore its impact on PC's promotion (Gao and Tian, 2020;Jing et al, 2020) or the enterprises' behaviors under policy intervention (Dou et al, 2019b). The interaction of governments, developers and contractors in the process of PC's promotion has been ignored, leading to a deviation from reality.…”