How environmental performance influence client satisfaction on projects that adopt green construction practices: The role of economic performance and client types
Introduction
Client satisfaction is topmost among other criteria a contractor seeks to achieve in every construction project, and projects that adopt green construction site practices are no exception. In addition to time, quality, and cost, client satisfaction is among the key indicators for assessing the performance of contractors in the construction sector (Othman, 2015). As a result of the important role client satisfaction plays in the performance of both contractors and construction projects, there has been lots of literature focused on it (e.g. Aliakbarlou et al. (2017); Hadidi et al. (2017)). In a study conducted in Turkey by Arslan and Kivrak (2008), they observed that client satisfaction is top among the determinants of project performance in the construction industry. Consequent upon this, contractors have been confronted with the challenge of devising strategies to meet, improve, and possibly surpass the clients’ expected satisfaction (Smith et al., 2001). Nevertheless, client satisfaction is rarely or not sufficiently considered in green construction studies (Durdyev et al., 2018), particularly with regards to considering the mechanism through which client satisfaction is achieved on projects that adopt green construction practices, and also the difference in the level of satisfaction of clients based on their individual characteristics if they are either public or private clients.
The construction industry clients’ satisfaction has been neglected despite the important role they play. This is unexpected since the primary purpose of the construction industry is the provision of services to the clients (Vennström and Eriksson, 2010). Several studies have acknowledged the importance of clients in construction. For example, in a study conducted in Vietnam, it was concluded that clients are the most influential stakeholders on construction projects (Nguyen et al., 2009). Similar views were expressed by Li et al. (2018). Despite this, rather than giving due attention to satisfying and understanding the clients, the focus and emphasis of the majority of green construction studies is on the final product (Aliakbarlou et al., 2018a).
In Nigeria, despite the known benefits of the environmental performance of construction projects, some clients are still skeptical due to the perceived resultant high investment costs associated with it (Tunji-Olayeni et al., 2018), which is in contradiction with the findings of previous studies such as Onubi et al., 2020a, Onubi et al., 2020b and Ojelabi et al. (2018). However, client satisfaction was regarded as the third most fundamental component from the mission statement of construction companies in Nigeria surveyed by Tunji-Olayeni et al. (2018). Furthermore, Faith et al. (2018) opined that both local and foreign construction companies operating in Nigeria view the environmental performance of construction projects as a catalyst for improved coperate identity, greater profits (economic performance) and increased client base resulting from greater client satisfaction. This implies that clients’ satisfaction is a product of a construction project’s economic and environmental performance.
Contractors in the construction industry execute projects for a variety of clients be it public or private clients with different characteristics and values. These clients anticipate that due consideration is given to actualizing their needs and meeting their peculiar expectations (Aliakbarlou et al., 2018b). If the values, characteristics, and expectations of the clients are not well understood by the contractors, then there is a high possibility of the clients not being satisfied with the project outcomes (Thyssen et al., 2010). As a result of this, several studies have called for the need to better understand the different client types in the construction industry (Boyd and Chinyio, 2008).
Also, the yardstick for determining the performance or otherwise of a construction project varies across different individuals and stakeholders depending on their background, values, and expectations. Construction projects that adopt green practices and specifically the environmental performance of the projects affect various clients with different social, environmental, and economic interests in different distinct ways (Li et al., 2018). For one client, the completion of a construction project within budget could be more satisfying than the environmental performance of the project. Therefore, studying the performance of projects that adopt green practices and neglecting the types of clients and their individual standards/values for measuring performance is of little significance (Tripathi and Jha, 2018).
Several studies about issues related to understanding construction clients have been undertaken. However, studies related to the level of satisfaction between different types of clients regarding the environmental performance of projects that adopt green practices are lacking. Also, several studies have been conducted to ascertain how cost, schedule performance, and conformance to technical specifications by the contractor affect client satisfaction with little or no consideration on how environmental performance impacts the satisfaction of different client types. Additionally, due to the cultural setting of the Nigerian construction industry, there are parameters influencing client characteristics, environmental performance, and client satisfaction which differ from what is obtainable in other climes such as environmental laws, administrative peculiarities, economy, and cultural inclination. Therefore, the objective of this study is to evaluate empirically the effect of client types on the relationship between environmental performance and client satisfaction and understand the mechanism through which environmental performance leads to client satisfaction through economic performance.
This study is significant to contractors as it will assist them in prioritizing and harnessing their scarce resources in such a way as to meet the client’s expectations and identify their (clients’) preferences/values to brighten their chances of getting repeat businesses and referrals. The study’s significance also lies in its ability to empower contractors with an in-depth understanding of different client types, characteristics, and preferences. This will enable them to plan projects with foresight considering clients’ values in order to meet their expectations and satisfy their needs.
Next, we hypothesize and offer empirical evidence to show the mechanism through which environmental performance leads to clients’ satisfaction through economic performance and provide proof on how the effects of environmental performance on client satisfaction differs across public and private clients.
Section snippets
Client types and characteristics
A client can be described as an entity or individual that integrates the values, interests, and needs of the beneficiaries of construction services, potential users, and other primary and secondary stakeholders (Kamara et al., 2000). Ayegun et al. (2018) state that a client is the owner of the construction project and the one whose needs the completed facility seeks to satisfy. As such, the client is the main reason for the existence of the construction industry, and therefore it is imperative
Survey development and measures
The data for this study was collected using the survey method for the purpose of hypothesis testing. This study adopted previously established measures with slight modifications in some cases to suit the context of the present study. The reason for selecting the studies presented in Table 1 was because they contained questions that had been tested previously and this raises the confidence that they are good indicators of the constructs to be measured in this study particularly with regards to
Demographics
The profile of the study respondents shows that most of the respondents had master’s degree (29.2%), followed by bachelor’s degree (26.2%), higher national diploma (16.1%), postgraduate diploma (12.5%), ordinary national diploma (10.7%) and doctorate degree (5.4%). In terms of working experience, most of the respondents had working experience of between 11 and 15 years (28.6%), 25% of the respondents had between 15 and 20years of working experience, followed by respondents with 6–10 years of
Discussion
This study examined the effect of environmental performance on client satisfaction, it also investigated the moderating effect of types of client on the relationship between environmental performance and client satisfaction. Lastly, the study analyzed the mechanism through which environmental performance leads to client satisfaction through economic performance. The results show that the environmental performance of class A contractors’ projects in Nigeria have a positive significant effect on
Conclusion
Identifying the effect of environmental performance on client’s satisfaction plays an important role in enlightening construction managers and project managers on how to enhance their performance relative to that of their competitors considering different types of clients. This study analyzed the effect of environmental performance on client satisfaction, the moderating role of type of clients on the relationship between environmental performance and client satisfaction, and the mediating
Limitations of the study and suggestion for future studies
Regardless of the strengths of this study and its practical and theoretical contributions, there exist some limitations. An explained variance (R2) of 0.204 obtained in this study is satisfactory, nevertheless, other factors aside from economic performance and client types which could influence client satisfaction but are not considered in this study have been identified in previous studies. Future research should consider other factors and variables such as health and safety performance, and
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Hilary Omatule Onubi: Methodology, Data curation, Writing - original draft, Investigation, Formal analysis. Nor’Aini Yusof: Conceptualization, Methodology, Supervision. Ahmad Sanusi Hassan: Writing - review & editing, Supervision.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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