Exploring beyond-compliance behaviors of Australian building practitioners: A cluster analysis

Abstract

To meet Australia's 2030 goal of a zero-energy and carbon-ready residential building industry, new homes must attain high-performance ratings that are beyond-compliance. However, recent Nationwide House Energy Rating Scheme (NatHERS) data shows that most new residential projects in Victoria (Australia) were designed to meet only the minimum compliance level, without going beyond-compliance. Apart from the commonly examined reasons related to clients and policymakers, an underexplored aspect is the diverse behaviors of building practitioners during the compliance process. To effectively motivate different building practitioners to achieve beyond-compliance outcomes, a fundamental yet unanswered question is: how to segment building practitioners based on behavior constructs. To fill this gap, the study conducts a cluster analysis to explore segments of building practitioners with different beyond-compliance behaviors. Data were collected from a questionnaire survey of 73 residential building practitioners in Victoria, including architects/draftspersons, builders, and thermal performance assessors. Victoria was selected because many new Victorian houses still fail to achieve beyond-compliance, highlighting the importance of exploration. Three clusters of building practitioners were identified: lingerer, characterized by low subjective norms, perceived behavioral control; close-follower, marked by high normative alignment but low attitudes; and leader, distinguished by strong attitudes, subjective norms. The most significant difference between clusters was the subjective norms driven by clients' requests. As the first clustering study to segment building practitioners based on beyond-compliance behaviors, the findings facilitate building practitioners to identify key areas for self-improvement, and also help policymakers develop tailored strategies to promote different segments of building practitioners to go beyond-compliance.