Stakeholder Perceptions of Sustainable Infrastructure Project Delivery: A Comparative Analysis between Guangdong, Hong Kong, and Macao

Abstract

China is experiencing the rapid development of infrastructure projects throughout the country, especially in the Guangdong-Hong Kong SAR-Macao SAR Greater Bay Area. This is placing the Chinese construction industry under tremendous pressure to transition to a sustainability orientation due to the various economic, social, and environmental challenges involved. The transition to more sustainable infrastructure projects requires the involvement of more stakeholders, while the multistakeholder context is of less importance when making project decisions, and this may create an adverse effect on the sustainability level of infrastructure projects. Based on the questionnaire data collected, this study addresses this issue by comparatively analysing stakeholder perceptions of sustainable infrastructure delivery between Guangdong province, Hong Kong SAR, and Macao SAR. Through independent sample $t$ -tests, the disparity in perceptions between paired stakeholder groups in the Greater Bay Area (as a whole) is revealed. Three pairs, i.e., government department and supervising engineers, owners and designers, and supervising engineers and operators, are found to be the most conflicting, while contractors and supervising engineers are the least. Of the 18 sustainability items analysed, shaped local identity and international reputation (SOC, social factor 8) is the most controversial, while value-for-money of the proposed project during its lifecycle (EOC, economic factor 5) and green design and construction (ENV, environmental factor 2) have the greatest consensus towards their roles in achieving project sustainability. Significantly, different stakeholder perceptions between the three are also identified, and the contractor group is found to share the least consensus geographically, while the operators have the least conflict rating of the relevant importance of various sustainability factors. The thorough analysis of sustainability-related items of economy, society, and environment contributes to understanding the attitudes of the various stakeholder groups involved, which then helps reduce their conflicts during sustainable infrastructure delivery.