Barriers to Undertaking Green Building Projects in Developing Countries: A Turkish Perspective

Green buildings (GBs) play an important role in achieving sustainable development goals. However, the implementation of green technologies in building projects has not reached the desired level in developing countries such as Turkey because of barriers stemming from country-related factors as well as factors related to design and construction. The objective of this study was to explore the barriers to undertaking GB projects in Turkey. A questionnaire survey was administered to 116 construction practitioners to analyze the criticality of barriers to GB design and construction in the Turkish construction industry. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were adopted to evaluate the data obtained from the questionnaire survey. The findings suggest that the major barriers that hinder the adoption of GBs in Turkey are higher construction cost, lack of knowledge about GBs, lack of an authorized GB rating system, unavailability of GB materials, and inadequate market demand, whereas longer design time is the least critical barrier. The results of factor analysis indicate that the barriers to undertaking GB projects can be grouped under five "factors", i.e., cost- and demand-related barriers, market-related barriers, people-related barriers, government-related barriers, and time-related barriers. In light of the results, policy makers and construction practitioners can devise strategies to promote GBs in Turkey, which can also be valid in other developing countries with similar socio-economic conditions.