An integrated social sustainability assessment framework: the case of construction industry

Purpose The discourse of construction practitioners and decision-makers worldwide has begun to appreciate and acknowledge the advantages of sustainable building. Toward this goal, one of the main steps is creating a control mechanism, which provides the context for moving to sustainable buildings by monitoring the environmental, economic and social dimensions of sustainability. The previous research studies indicate the social dimension has received far less attention than the economic and environmental aspects. Therefore, this study aims at developing a social sustainability framework to evaluate building systems. Design/methodology/approach This research has chosen the Parsons sociological theory as its theoretical framework basis and acquires the research theoretical framework with its modification and completion by grounded theory (GT). In the next step, to realize the GT structure validity and model fitting, the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used and the research hypotheses were tested. Findings An integrated social sustainable framework is presented with five subsystems: socio-political, socio-cultural, socio-institutional, socio-economic and socio-environmental. This research addresses the void of a comprehensive social sustainability framework in the construction industry, and the findings can contribute to construction industry practitioners and decision-makers to evaluate building systems socially. Originality/value The application of this framework is not limited to the construction industry and building systems. It can deliver a general use for integrating social perspectives into decision-making on various subjects. Localization and specialization of current research's social sustainability components and factors can be a high potential research topic for future studies, in all fields and scopes. This framework can be a significant contribution to the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a basis for creating comparable models to assess social aspects of buildings, campuses and urban sustainability.