Key factors of people's willingness to pay for green buildings in a less developed region in China: A pilot research effort in Shanxi Province

Abstract

With the process of urbanization, China has entered into a booming of construction, and new buildings currently cost large quantities of natural resources and energy. Green Buildings are one of the approaches being implemented to help to mitigate the impacts of the building stock on the environment. However, the majority of green buildings are located in eastern region of China where the economies are more developed. For developing regions in the middle and western regions, green buildings are few. Low income is easily assumed to be the barrier, but research performed to test this assumption, is scarce. The authors of this paper chose Shanxi Province, a less developed region, as the area of investigation to investigate this issue. The authors developed a framework of consumer behaviour based on the Howard-Sheth model to find the key factors that affect people's willingness to pay (WTP), for which a questionnaire survey was conducted in the study area in Shanxi Province. The survey data were analysed by logistic regression and cross tabulation methods. The results revealed that rather than income, the knowledge related to green buildings and awareness of environmental protection had significant impacts upon green building WTP. Based on the analyses, several suggestions were developed, including: imposing certain demands on constructors of buildings to adopt green facilities, improving the publicity of green buildings, etc. This study investigated people's real attitudes toward green building and found a high WTP in the region, which deserves further attention from the relevant stakeholders in the future.