Barriers to the development of prefabricated buildings in China: a news coverage analysis

Purpose The Chinese construction industry is experiencing a rapid growth these days. Due to the requirements of energy conservation, emission reduction and construction waste management, the development of prefabricated buildings (PBs) has attracted much attention in the Chinese construction industry. However, the development of PBs are still in their infancy in China, which have been negatively impacted by many obstacles. It is of great significance to clarify and analyze these obstacles for the purpose of promoting the development of PBs in China. Due to the wideness and complex features of obstacles, the existing literature exploring the research topic lacks comprehensiveness. The purpose of this paper is to systematically identify and discuss the obstacles that hinder the development of PBs in China. Design/methodology/approach This paper adopts the method of news report analysis based on the news reports retrieved from China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) and nine major portals in China. The Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) method of content analysis was used to rank the obstacles according to their importance. Findings A total of 79 obstacles to the development of PBs in China are identified, and the 79 obstacles are divided into 8 dimensions. Among the Top 20 obstacles, the government dimension accounted for the highest number of 5, the market and consumer dimension and development organization dimension were 4, Manufacturing Enterprise of Prefabricated Components (PCs) dimension, construction organization dimension and design organization dimension were 2, logistics enterprise dimension was 1, and industry association dimension was 0. Among them, the biggest obstacle is the high transportation costs. Research limitations/implications First, data collection may not be very comprehensive. Second, this paper is only based on the obstacles in the development of PBs in China, and the universality of the management conclusions needs to be further strengthened. Practical implications The research results help the stakeholders in the Chinese PBs industry to better understand the barriers hindering the industry development in a systemic way, which will help propose appropriate strategies to address these barriers. Originality/value This paper clarifies the obstacles of China's PBs and makes an analysis, which is of great value to the development of China's PBs.