Kua, H W (2006) The design of effective policies for the promotion of sustainable construction materials. PhD thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
Abstract
This research explores the associated effects of policy tools employed to promote sustainable building materials. By comparing the original motivations and intended effects of these policies and their actual outcome, and subsequently understanding the reasons behind any disparities between them, we suggest ways by which future policy planning can be improved. This research is based on seven detailed case studies. They cover the applications of virgin material taxes in Denmark and Sweden, forest management and biodiversity legislations in United States' Northwest and its coupling economic adjustment initiative, legislations/public outreach/demonstration projects on the use of substitute fuels for cement manufacturing in United States and the United Kingdom, and economic incentives to promote afforestation/reforestation in Chile. Each of these cases is attended by negative, unanticipated outcomes. By analyzing these outcomes, we observe that a negative and unanticipated policy outcome occurs when a sustainability indicator/issue is either completely ignored by policymakers, or the policymakers fail to identify intrinsic but inconspicuous links between seemingly disparate indicators. These unexpected outcomes can be reduced, or avoided, if policymakers conceptualize policies more broadly, for which purpose we propose the concept of integrated policymaking. This concept promotes the idea of co-addressing, or even co-optimizing, a wide range of eleven to sixteen sustainability indicators covering all the three domains of sustainability---economy, environment and employment. Furthermore, in doing so, policymakers must promote interactions among the different levels of governmental agencies (i.e. horizontal and vertical integration) and between the governmental and non-governmental stakeholder groups (i.e. time horizon integration and integration across stakeholder groups). We emphasize the significance of five different but interrelated types of feedback loops in supporting these different types and goals of integration. Finally, we applied this concept to the seven cases and proposed a series of innovative integrated policy strategies to address the negative, unanticipated outcomes observed.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Thesis advisor: | Fernandez, J and Ashford, N |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | sustainability; vertical integration; employment; feedback; integration; manufacturing; policy; sustainable building; sustainable construction; stakeholder; Chile; Denmark; Sweden; United Kingdom; United States; case study; motivation; legislation |
| Index terms: | promotion, Chile, policy tools, forest, coupling, case study, Denmark, biodiversity, agency, employment, interaction, sustainable building material, sustainable building, motivation, sustainable construction, economic incentive, integration, disparity, Sweden, vertical integration, strategy, feedback loop, United States, legislation, sustainability indicator, United Kingdom |
| Subjects: | legal systems, economic analysis, data collection methods, policy studies, sustainable materials, biodiversity, organizational analysis, management, Geography, systems engineering, control systems, sustainable construction, behavioral psychology, psychology, sociology, sustainability assessment, social justice, environmental science, vertical integration |
| Topics: | Governance, Human Resources, Supply Chain Management, Legal Issues, Ethics, Geographical Context, Engineering Principles, Organizational Design, Research Practice, Sustainability, Business Strategy |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here