An exploratory analysis of low-carbon transitions in China's construction industry based on multi-level perspective

Climate change caused by carbon emissions is a concern for many countries. As the world's largest carbon emitter, China's construction industry generates substantial carbon emissions. However, previous research has primarily focused on promoting low-carbon building products or calculating carbon emissions to propose low-carbon transition measures. There has been limited research on low-carbon transitions in the construction in-dustry from an industry system perspective. This study aimed to identify the driving factors and their in-terrelationships for low-carbon transitions in the construction industry. A multi-level perspective (MLP) was presented as a heuristic structure to analyze driving factors. An integrated interpretative structural model (ISM) and cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification (MICMAC) technique was adopted to explore the interactions among factors. The results demonstrate that a six-level hierarchy of 22 drivers was constructed, and relationship degrees between the factors were discovered. The strongest drivers were low-carbon legal regula -tion, followed by industrial structure and organizational characteristics connected to industrial development. Improving these fundamental factors will increase the probability of successful transitions. The results also demonstrate that transitions are a collaborative process that involves multiple stakeholders. These findings can provide suggestions for low-carbon practices in the construction industry.