Exploring the design risks affecting operation performance of green commercial buildings in China

Despite the number of new green commercial buildings (GCBs) increases rapidly over the last decade, its operation performance has not been improved simultaneously. Risk exploration is considered as an essential way to improve project performance. Design risks, which could have significant effects on the operation performance of GCBs, should be identified. However, little research has been done on the design risk factors of GCBs with interfere of system vulnerability. Therefore, the objective of this study is to detect the impact of the design risks on the operation performance of GCBs moderated by system vulnerability in the context of China. Through systematic literature review, four categories of design risks were initially identified (design technical risks, design management risks, design behavior risks and green certification risks) and three types of system vulnerability of GCBs were distinguished (exposure, resilience and sensitivity). Structural equation modeling was employed to test the theoretical hypothesis with 481 valid questionnaires. The research findings revealed that all four categories of design risks have significant negative impacts on the operational performance of GCBs with different influence levels and behavior risk is the most influential kind of risks. Additionally, the three sets of system vulnerability play positive moderating roles for the connection between the design risks and the operational performance of GCBs. The higher the system vulnerability, the greater the negative impact of the design risks on the operational performance. The positive moderating effect of resilience is the highest, meaning that the negative impact of the design risks on the operation performance of GCBs is much more significant in case of resilience factors. The research results could offer effective and valuable information not only for designers and owners to adjust strategies to improve the operation performance of GCBs, but also for related government departments to update green building assessment systems and set up regulations for improving the actual performance of green buildings.