Quantifying impact factors for sustainable road engineering

Abstract

This research is to identify impact factors in both cost and benefit aspects using quantitative techniques and then to determine their corresponding weights for sustainable road engineering projects. The impact factors are initially gathered from literature review and expert interviews, resulting in a total of 10 factors for questionnaire development. A 5-scale Likert questionnaire is accordingly developed for a survey. With the fulfillment of statistical criteria, 54 of 120 questionnaires are returned and a reliability test is employed to examine sampling adequacy in the beginning stage of data analysis. Therefore, we are able to identify the impact factors by the use of eight tests of missing value, mean, standard deviation, skewness, t-testing, correlation coefficients, factor loading, and measures of sampling adequacy (MSA). To determine the weight of each factor, the principle component analysis combined with orthogonal rotation best fit this research. Therefore, the analysis yields the results showing that 3 components include 9 factors in the cost aspect and 2 components include 6 factors in the benefit aspect. The finding is anticipated to benefit practitioners in the designing, planning, budgeting, and controlling phases of road engineering projects.