Research on the Influencing Factors for the Use of Green Building Materials through the Number Growth of Construction Enterprises Based on Agent-Based Modeling

Abstract

As the concept of green building is increasingly promoted worldwide, the use of green building materials has also attracted great attention. In order to improve the utilization rate of green building materials in construction projects, this paper tries to explore influencing factors based on the method of agent-based modeling (ABM), which is well-suited to the study of complex systems and their emergent behaviors. There are two types of agents being set, named, respectively, greedy construction enterprises and selective construction enterprises. Meanwhile, the construction unit’s intention to use green building materials is treated as the criterion. Two types of construction enterprises compete for projects to obtain profits. In order to reveal the mechanism of the evolutionary path of the macro system, the movement step, project unit profit, project cost and expansion cost are adopted as the independent variables and the number of enterprises is the dependent variable. Then, the experiment was performed with the NetLogo simulation platform. The simulation results show that, it is not beneficial for the selective construction enterprises when the movement step in selecting projects is too long and the project units are too profitable. However, when the project cost and expansion cost become higher, there is a significant advantage for selective construction enterprises to go for a long-term development. Therefore, after a comprehensive evaluation of project costs and unit profits, an optimal strategy can be formulated to ensure the quantitative scale of construction enterprises in the construction industry. This behavior can indirectly improve the intention of construction units to use green building materials and further promote the utilization rate of green building materials.