Factors Influencing Engineers’ Attitude towards Environmental Sustainability

Abstract

Engineers have a vital role in addressing environmental degradation in construction projects. Therefore, engineers’ positive attitude towards the environment is important to ensure that construction projects are carried out responsibly. The objective of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence engineers’ attitude towards green practice. Six factors; Knowledge, Self-initiative, Firm Support, Government Support, Board of Engineers Support and Client Attributes were assumed to influence the engineers’ attitude towards green practice. A self-administered survey with 37 items was distributed to engineering firms in Peninsular Malaysia and 128 usable responses were received. The results show a moderate relationship with 32 percent of the variances in the relationship between the six factors and engineers’ attitude. The results reveal that self-initiative and government support have a significant and positive impact on the engineers’ attitude towards green practice with the higher effect coming from the support from the government (f2 = 0.210) as compared to self-initiative (f2 = 0.058). In contrast, the results provide insufficient evidence about the relationship between Knowledge, Firm Support, Board of engineers Support and Client Attributes and engineers’ attitude towards green practice. The results serve as a guide to the policy makers and engineers to ensure responsible attitude can be adopted towards the environment.