Managers’ Perception on Adaptation of Green Building Practices and Environmental Performance

Abstract

The need for sustainability has gained remarkable momentum in the context of the global challenges of environmental pollution, climate change, and global warming. In this context, as the largest single share in global resource use and pollution emission, the building construction industry must play a remarkable role to overcome this negative impact. In this setting, the concept of Green Building (GB) provides an alternative sustainable solution for the environmental impacts of buildings while supporting sustainable development. Green building provides benefits not only from an environmental perspective but also from economic and social aspects. Thus, stakeholders of real estate tend to adopt green building technology to avoid the pressure of the internal and external business environment. In this background, by following the Melvilles’ Belief-Action-Outcome framework, the study argued that green building practices of an organization are the outcome of the integrated micro and macro level pressure created by stakeholders for better adaptation of the GB concept, and beliefs of decision-makers on future consequences of non-adaptation of GB concept. Thus, this study aims to investigate the impact of macro and micro factors on the action of executives of the apparel sector of Sri Lanka on the adoption of green building practices. The population of the study is defined as executives of apparel companies in Sri Lanka. A total of 300 questionnaires has been distributed to executives who were selected using convenience sampling techniques and 86 valid responses were received. The Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used as the analytical technique of the study. The results suggest that macro factors namely coercive and mimetic pressure were not able to make a significant influence on executives’ attitudes toward GB practices adoption. However, it is confirmed that the attitudes of executives significantly contribute to managers’ actions on adopting pollution prevention, adoption for product stewardship, and adoption for sustainable development practices. Out of these three actions, product stewardship and sustainable development significantly contribute to the environmental performance of the organization. Accordingly, the study concludes that neither future consideration nor pressure created by the business environment act as motivators of the adoption of the green building concept within the apparel industry in Sri Lanka.