Modelling interrelationships between barriers to adopting green building technologies in China's rural housing via grey-DEMATEL

Implementing the rural revitalisation strategy provides a unique opportunity for adopting green building technologies (GBTs) in China's rural housing construction, which is mostly self-built, is well suited to adopting GBTs. However, adopting GBTs in China's rural housing has remained stagnant in pilot demonstration stage over the last decades. Limited studies have been conducted on China's rural self-built housing. This study aims to bridge this knowledge gap by identifying barriers to adopting GBTs in China's rural housing construction and examining their cause-and-effect interrelationships. Initially, 20 barriers were identified in an extensive literature review. With expert feedback, the cause-and-effect relationships between these barriers were visualised via the grey decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory technique. The impact, receptivity, prominence, and position analyses were adopted to study the barrier interrelationships. A sensitivity analysis assessed the accuracy and robustness. Twelve barriers can be classified as causes and eight as effects, divided into core, driving, independent, and impact based on the position and prominence indices. The core causal factors include traditional social norms of rural housing construction, the shortage of expertise/skilled workers, popularity of the self-built model, lack of policy and regulations for GBTs in rural areas, incomplete technical standards or systems, lack of importance attached by the government and lack of financial incentives and rewards. Improvement should be prioritised for the core barriers, which are causal and influence other barriers in the effect group. The corresponding recommendations are formulated to mitigate or eliminate these causal barriers. The study findings provide structural support to the government by determining the causal and effect barriers to adopting GBTs in China's rural housing construction. The research implications can help practitioners and policymakers effectively promote adopting GBTs in self-built housing in developing countries.