Modeling contractors' ecological protection efforts determination for expressway construction projects
Introduction
Expressway construction projects (ECPs), which are made up of numerous individual work tasks with predefined delivery objectives (e.g., schedule, cost, and quality), have been a matter of concern in the attainment of environmental sustainability (Karlson et al., 2014). ECPs cause environmental disturbances such as fragmentation, deforestation, habitat loss, and changes to hydrological processes and biomass (Karlson et al., 2014). As disclosed in prior research, part of the disturbances may be remedied immediately, but most of them take a long time to restore (Olander et al., 1998).
ECPs' ecological impacts are all-pervasive (Treweek, 2009), suggesting that contractors must search for effective approaches to assessing and mitigating the impacts. Coffin (2007) proposed a mechanism for manipulating the impacts of road projects on the surrounding environment from the perspective of ecosystems' abiotic and biota components. The proposed mechanism purports to achieve fair resource sharing through stakeholders' joint actions to protect the ecological environment. Nevertheless, aligning all stakeholders around a shared mission poses challenges to governments, clients, and consultants. Specifically, governmental determination to intervene in environmental destruction is weakened by fragmented and overlapping administrative functions (Zhang and Cao, 2015). Clients might have little interest in securing a unified package of resources to minimize environmental degradation due to profit orientation. Consultants are subject to ECP technological and managerial complexities that inhibit them from making reasonable ecological protection efforts.
The performance of ecological protection depends on whether contractors are aware of relevant problems and simplify and streamline the problem solving (Engel et al., 2013; Koppenjan and Enserink, 2009). Unfortunately, ECP contractors usually lack the full capability of making decisions on the input of such efforts, and thus, their joint efforts may not be rewarded as expected. To fill this research gap, the study proposes a model representing contractors' effort determination to protect ECPs' surrounding ecological environment. The research questions guiding this work are three-faceted: How to determine the efforts? What indicators must be included? What relationships these indicators have?
The proposed model is composed of four ecology-related latent variables and twelve indicators (hereafter referred to as ‘indicators’ for simplicity), namely project features (six indicators), project perceptions (three indicators), ecological impact assessment (two indicators), and ecological protection decision-making (one indicator). To validate the proposed model, data from China's ECP sector were collected and analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Besides, we detected the relationships between the four latent variables and the indicators. According to the empirical data analysis, the connectivity between project features and project perception is critical in ecological protection efforts. Thus, the research findings favor practitioners assess the ecological impacts and offer an effective way to decide ecological protection efforts. Furthermore, the theoretical framework underpinning the construction-based model applies to other industrial settings, and the built-in indicators shed light on the framework's generalization.
Section snippets
Attributes of ECPs' ecological impacts
Human construction activities cause extensive disturbance to the natural environment. The disturbance to habitats or species in ecosystems produces multiple ecological impacts (Igondova et al., 2016). In the ECP sector, ecosystems' abiotic components exhibit considerable environmental impacts on hydrology, soil, water, air, noise, wind, and light (Forman and Alexander, 1998; Mo et al., 2017). If construction activities are not controlled effectively, these impacts will further disturb the
A conceptual framework
ECP contractors' efforts to protect ecological environments are usually based on deductive reasoning, drawing on some facts that contractors perceive. In this study, we examined the efforts following a progressive analysis of phenomena, experiences learned from the past, feedback from partners, and reactions to the clients' requirements.
Methodology
As shown in Fig. 2, four steps were found incremental to achieve the research aims. The first one is to collect samples and data. The second step is to identify measurable indicators. Then PLS-SEM is applied to build the model. Lastly, we tested the model and optimized it by adjusting variables.
Results
We built the model framework by means of literature review and semi-structured interview. By using the data derived from selected samples, we tested and adjusted the model. We obtained the model including four latent variables (i.e., project features, project perceptions, ecological impact evaluation, and ecological protection efforts decision-making). The latent variable “project features” has three measurable indicators, namely PF1, PF2, and PF5. The latent variable “project perceptions” also
Discussion
Contractors play a vital role in protecting the ecological environment along the construction process. An urgent need to improve contractors' efforts to solve ecological problems calls for a generally accepted model to aid their decision-making. The model is the whole approach to aid contractors in deciding to preserve the ecological environment. The model should give clear information about what steps deserve inclusion and what indicators should be considered. As shown in Fig. 6, the final
Conclusions
In this study, a model is proposed to assist contractors in deciding the efforts to protect the physical environment surrounding ECPs. It is found that: (1) the model consists of a three-step logic chain to protect ecosystems; (2) the first step validates ecological problem-solving theory in that problem definition is most important when solving ecological problems; (3) the second step demonstrates that the intensity of human activities is a significant factor influencing ECPs' ecological
Author statement
Liu Wu is responsible for the design of the work, data collection and drafting the article.
Soojin Yoon is responsible for revision of the article.
Kunhui Ye is responsible for data analysis and interpretation, revision of the article, final approval of the version to be published.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The authors certify that they have NO affiliations with or involvement in any organization or entity with any financial interest (such as honoraria; educational grants; participation in speakers' bureaus; membership, employment, consultancies, stock ownership, or other equity interest; and expert testimony or patent-licensing arrangements), or non-financial interest (such as personal or professional relationships, affiliations, knowledge or beliefs) in the subject matter or materials discussed
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Research Funded by the Ministry of Education of China (19YJC6300065) and Fundamental Funding Project of Fundamental Scientific Research Funds for Central Universities in China (No. 2018 CDJSK 03 PT 16).
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