Pathways to successful building green retrofit projects: Causality analysis of factors affecting decision making

Building green retrofit is an effective means of energy-saving and achieving sustainable development goals. The success of a building retrofit is highly dependent on the decision-making of retrofit strategy selection, and its process is affected by multi-dimensional factors. The importance of interdependent relationship between each factor is emphasized, however existing quantitative models are difficult to reflect building green retrofit in practice. To address this problem, the interdependent relationships among occupant impact, environmental impact, institutional characteristics, economic feasibility, techni-cal practicality and government conditions of 52 completed green retrofit projects in China were ana-lyzed by fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) combining Causal-Loop Diagram (CLD) method. Four distinct pathways in achieving successful building green retrofit projects were identified. The CLD highlighted the role of government and the contradiction between economic feasibility loop and environmental impact loop. The findings can help decision-makers examine the relevant factors and choose appropriate retrofit strategies according to the project priority. Based on previous frame-works, the accuracy and applicability of the factors are promoted in this study. Moreover, the improved theoretical framework can be adopted to worldwide green retrofit projects.